Time's Last Gift
by
Philip Jose Farmer


One

The explosion was as loud as a 75-millimeter cannon's.

At one second, there had been nothing but dead wet grass and limestone
rocks on the edge of the steep hill.  A gray torpedo shape appeared as
if precipitated by some invisible chemical in the air.  The
displacement of air caused the boom that rattled down the hillside and
the valley and across the distant river and bounced back to the
vehicle.

The H. G. Wells I, without moving a micron in space, had traveled from
A.D. 2070, Spring, to circa 12,000 B.C."  Spring.  Immediately after
making the long leap in time, it moved in space.  The vehicle had
appeared two feet in the air and on the lip of the hill.  It fell with
a crash to the ground and began rolling.

Forty feet long, its hull of irradiated plastic, it did not suffer from
the very steep three-hundred-foot descent.  It was not even scratched,
though it broke off sharp projections of lime-stone, and eventually
stopped upright at the bottom of the hill after snapping off a score of
dwarf pines.

"That was better than the fun-house," Rachel Silverstein said in a
quivering voice.  She smiled, but her skin was almost as pale as her
teeth.

Drummond Silverstein, her husband, grunted.  His eyes were wide, and
his skin was gray.  But the blood was returning swiftly.

Robert von Billmann spoke with a very slight trace of German accent.

"I presume it is safe to unstrap ourselves?"

John Gribardsun twisted some dials on the instrument board before him.
A slight whirring told of the projection of a TV camera.  The view
changed from a blue sky with some high white clouds to dead wet grass
ahead and, a mile away, the river at the bottom of the valley.

He turned another dial, and the view switched to the hill down which
they had rolled.  Halfway up, a fox-like animal jumped out from behind
a rock.

The camera swiveled.  On the other side of the valley was another
animal.  Gribardsun turned the closeup dial.

"A hyena," Gribardsun said.  His voice was deep and authoritative.  "A
cave hyena.  Looks like a Kenyan hyena except it's much larger and all
gray."

Gribardsun had paled only slightly when they had rolled.  He spoke with
a British accent with a very slight underlying suspicion of another.
Von Billmann, the linguist, had never been able to identify it.  He had
refused to question the Englishman about it because he wanted to label
it himself.  He prided himself on his ability to recognize any of the
major languages and at least two hundred of the minor.  But he had no
idea of what tongue underlay the Englishman's speech.

The screen showed the view behind the vehicle.  A tiny figure stepped
out from the shadow of a huge overhang of rock.  It ran to a large rock
and dropped behind it.

Rachel said, "That was a man, wasn't it?"

"Has to be," Gribardsun said.

He kept the camera upon the rock, and, after several minutes, a head
appeared.  He closed up, and they were looking at a seeming distance of
ten feet into the face of a man.  His hair and beard were light brown,
tangled, and long.  The face was broad and a prominent supraorbital
ridge shaded eyes of some light color.  The nose was large and
aquiline.

"I'm so thrilled," Rachel said.  "Our first man!  The first human
being.  A Magdalenian!"

The man stood up.  He was about six feet tall.  He wore a fur vest, fur
knee-length pants, and calf-length fur boots.  He carried a short
flint-tipped spear and an atlatl, a stick with a notch at one end,
which enabled him to cast the spear with greater force.  A skin belt
held a skin bag which looked as if it held a small animal or large
bird.  The belt also supported a skin sheath from which protruded a
wooden hilt.

Gribardsun looked at a dial.  "Outside temperature is fifty degrees
Fahrenheit," he said.  "And it's fifteen minutes past noon, late May
perhaps.  Warmer than I had expected."

"There's very little green as yet," Drummond Silverstein said.

Nobody spoke for a moment.  They were just beginning to feel the awe
that they had expected to feel.  The transition and the rolling had
numbed them, and the anesthesia of wonder and fright was just beginning
to dissolve.

Gribardsun checked that the equipment was operating at one hundred per
cent efficiency.  He ran through the CAA (checkout-after-arrival),
calling out each item to von Billmann, who sat on his left.  The German
repeated each, and the words of both were taped.  At the end of the
checkout, a green light flashed on the panel.

Gribardsun said, "The air outside is pure.  It's air that we haven't
known for a hundred and fifty years."

"Let's breathe it," Drummond Silverstein said.

The Englishman unstrapped himself and stood up.  He was six-foot-three,
and the top of his head missed the ceiling by only an inch.  He looked
as if he were thirty.  He had long, straight, very black hair, dark
gray eyes, and a handsome, slightly hawkish face.  The sheer
single-piece tunic revealed a body like Apollo's.  He was the M.D. of
the expedition, a physical anthropologist, an archeologist, a botanist,
and a linguist.  If England had not abolished titles, he would have
been a duke.

Robert von Billmann stood up a minute later.  He was six-foot-two,
well-built, thirty-five, titian-haired, and handsome in a pale Baltic
way.  He was the world's foremost linguist, a cultural anthropologist,
an art specialist, and had the equivalent of a master of arts in
chemistry.

Rachel Silverstein followed him.  She was short, petite, and dark but
had light blue eyes.  She was long-nosed, but pretty.  She had PhDs in
genetics and zoology and considerable training in botany and
meteorology.

Drummond Silverstein was about six feet tall, thin, and dark.  He was a
physicist and astronomer and was well trained in geology.  He was also
a well-known virtuoso on the violin and expert on musicology,
preliterate and civilized.

Gribardsun turned the large wheel and pushed open the bank-vault-like
port.  He stood for a moment in the exit while the others crowded
behind him.  He breathed deeply and then turned his head to them and
smiled slightly.

"I suppose I should say something as poetic as Armstrong's words when
he first put foot onto the Moon," he said.

He stepped out onto a narrow strip, the top of a flight of twelve
steps, which had slid out when the port was opened.  The air was
bracing.  He sniffed as if he were a great cat, and then he went down
the steps.  The camera on top of the vehicle had bent over to take in
the area of the port because he had set it to track him when he
emerged.  Its audio was also on.  His image and words would be recorded
for posterity if the vehicle returned.

"This is Time's last gift," he said loudly, looking up at the camera.
"Modern man will never again be able to travel to this point in time.
We, the crew of the H. G. Wells I, will do our best to thank Time and
Mankind for this great gift."

The others looked disappointed.  Evidently they thought that, if they
had been given the chance, they could have uttered more notable
words.

Gribardsun went back into the vessel and unlocked a box of weapons.
Rachel followed him and removed clothes of some light but very warm
material which retained body heat very effectively.  Armed and
weaponed, and two equipped with cameras the shape and size of American
footballs, they moved out.  The port had been closed, but the camera on
top of the vessel tracked them.  They began the steep climb with the
Englishman at their head.  They were in excellent physical condition,
but all except Gribardsun were puffing and red-faced by the time they
reached the top.

Gribardsun turned and looked back down.  The vessel was small.  But it
weighed three hundred tons, and it had to be moved back up to the
physical point where it had emerged from Time.  Otherwise, when the
time came to be pulled back to A.D. 2074, the vessel would remain in
12,000 B.C. And so would its crew.  The mechanics of time-travel
devices required that the vessel, and its original mass within plus or
minus ten ounces, be in the exact landing place.

Gribardsun drove a number of sharp plastic spikes into the ground to
mark the outlines of the depression formed where the vessel had fallen.
Four years from now, the depression might be smoothed out, and thus it
would be impossible to locate.

Rachel and von Billmann took films of the spot, and then Gribardsun and
Drummond Silverstein took the coordinates of the depression from three
large rocks sticking out of the soil nearby.

The H. G. Wells I had been set on a wooden platform on top of a hill
before being chronologically launched.  The edge of the hill in the
Vezere River valley, France, A.D. 2070, was forty feet away from the
vessel.  It had been expected that the edge of the hill in 12,000 B.C.
would be even more distant.  The geologists had affirmed this to be a
fact.  Gribardsun wondered if they had been correct but a slight
displacement in space had occurred.  The theoreticians said that this
would not occur, but the truth was that they did not know what would
happen in practice.

The process of time travel required an enormous amount of energy.  The
further back into time the machine went, the more the energy.  This
period was as far back as a machine could be sent.  There was a factor,
which only a few mathematicians understood, which required that the
most expensive and most dangerous journey be made first.  If the time
travelers waited, say, eight years more before attempting to go into
the Magdalenian, they would find themselves in circa 8000 B.C. The era
of 12,000 B.C. would be forever out of reach.  And if they waited for
ten years, they would find that 4000 B.C. was as far back as they could
go.

Moreover, there was a strange and unexplained limit at the other end.
The first small experimental man less model had been sent back one day
into time.  But it had never arrived, as they knew it would not, having
been present the day before.  Where the model went was not known.  Then
another model, at great expense of materials and energy, was sent back
a week.  This did not appear, as the experimenters knew it would not.
But they had to be sure.

At this time, the news media learned about Project Chronos, and it was
suspended for a while until the public, and Congress, were satisfied
that it was safe.  The old science-fiction idea that tampering with
time would change the course of events had to be dealt with.  Stories
by various writers from Wells to Silverberg and Bradbury and Heinlein,
illustrating the paradox and danger of time travel, were reprinted and
even dramatized.  Millions of people were fearful that time travel
would result in one of their ancestors being killed, and so their
descendants would vanish from the face of Earth, as if the boojum were
prowling it.

Jacob Moishe, leader of the project team that had invented the
time-travel machines, quieted this form of protest.  He showed, in a
series of articles, that if time travel was going to make any changes,
it had already done so, and therefore there was nothing to fear.  By
then the original goal of circa 25,000 B.C. was lost forever.  Too much
time had elapsed.  The expedition would have to settle for the middle
Magdalenian.  The funds were restored, and a small model was sent back
to one hundred years, and a search was made for it.  The theory was
that it had appeared in A.D. 1973 and had been picked up by someone who
did not, of course, recognize it.  But, since it was practically
indestructible, it existed now and was probably in someone's
possession.  Or perhaps buried some place.  Worldwide advertising
failed to turn up the model.

Meanwhile, another had been sent to A.D. 1875, and the advertising for
this one went around the world.  None showed up.  A third one was sent
back at a cost that staggered Congress and the public.  This one was
set to bob up about A.D. 1850 within fifty feet of where the project
buildings stood.

Dr.  Moishe's researches had shown that, in 1850, this hilltop in
Syracuse, New York, had been the scene of a mysterious and exceedingly
violent explosion.  He reasoned that the explosion had been caused when
the model had appeared inside some solid matter, such as soil or a
tree; the result of two solid objects trying to occupy the same space
had been the explosion.  A complete conversion of matter to energy had
not occurred, of course.  Otherwise, the hill and much of the
surrounding countryside would have disappeared.

The model contained radioactive particles, and so, after it was sent
back to 1850, the area for a mile around was scanned with geiger
counters.  A piece of the radioactive particle-bearing model was
located and identified.  Accusations of fraud were, of course, made,
but Dr.  Moishe had foreseen this and made foolproof arrangements.  He
had even gotten six congressmen and the Secretary of Science to watch
the entire procedure.

One of the theories about the failure of the first two models to be
found was immediately dismissed.  This theory postulated that the
structure of time was such that time travel was impossible within any
period in which contemporaries had been living.  In other words, time,
to avoid a paradox, but not the pathetic fallacy, would not permit
travel except in a time before anybody living in A.D. 2070 had been
born.  The critics pointed out, none too gently, that this would mean
that somebody born before A.D. 1875 was still living and that his
presence was keeping the models from appearing in A.D. 1973 and 1890.
If the hypothetical person was born in, say, A.D. 1870, then he would
today be 200 years old.  And that was impossible, for several reasons.
For one thing, a record existed of the birth date of everybody living,
and the oldest person in the world was 130.  She had been bora in A.D.
1940.

The theory was admittedly farfetched, if not crack potted  Its
proponent, who later committed suicide for unknown reasons, and so
discredited any reputation he had for sanity, replied that anyone that
old might have some reason for not wanting to be known.  And it was not
impossible to fake records.

John Gribardsun was thinking of this when Rachel Silverstein touched
his arm.  She seemed to be touching him at least ten times a day, as if
she were testing to make sure that he existed.  Or because she liked to
touch him.  He did not mind it, though he knew that Drummond disliked
it.  But it was up to her husband to say something about it to her,
and, so far as he knew, the man had never opened his mouth about it.

"Do you think we can get the ship back up by ourselves?"  she said. Her
light blue eyes were bright, as if she were burning with excitement.

"I suppose so," he said.  "But I think we could do it far more swiftly
and easily if we had the strong backs of some cavemen helping us.  So
we won't worry about it now.  After all, we have four years."

Robert yon Billmann said something sharply.  He was looking through
binoculars to the northeast, across the valley.  Gribardsun saw the
figures that had attracted von Billmann.  He lifted his own binoculars.
The heads and antlers of several brownish reindeer came into view.  He
moved the glasses and within a minute had zeroed in on a big grayish
shape.  It was a wolf.  Soon, he caught about a dozen with a sweep of
the glasses.

The deer were well aware of the wolves.  They continued to crop at the
moss between liftings of the head, to sniff the air, and to eye the
slinking beasts some fifty yards distant.

Presently some of the gray shapes floated behind a hill and soon
appeared ahead of the herd.  They disappeared again, and then those
that had remained moved in slowly toward the herd.  The deer waited for
a minute to make sure that the wolves would not stop and suddenly, as
if the leader had spoken, they bounded away.  The wolves ran after
them, and then, as the herd passed the hill behind which the others
were, they veered away.  Six wolves had run out at them.  One wolf
caught a doe that stumbled, and the others leaped upon it.  The
remaining deer got away, except for a buck that slipped when he leaped
across a brook.  Before he could get up again, he found two wolves
tearing at his legs.  These were joined by others, and the wolves quit
running.

Gribardsun had been watching with keen interest.  He put the binoculars
down and said, "And to think that the only wolves in our time were in
zoos or small reservations.  These beasts have a whole world to roam
in.  And there must be millions of them."

"Sometimes I think you're the zoologist," Rachel said.

"I am a naturalist."

He turned and looked down the valley where they had seen the man.  He
had long ago hidden behind a rock and, though Gribardsun had stopped on
the way up the hill to search for him with his binoculars, he had
failed to find him.  Now the man, having seen the four leave the
vessel, was approaching it.

"Curiosity kills more than a cat," Gribardsun said.

The man's home might be a little way off or many miles.  The expedition
had quite a few daylight hours left, so they might as well take
advantage of it.  There was much work to do.

He allowed the others to collect their samples of soil, plants, and
rocks and to take some more photographs.  Then he said that they should
return to the vessel, store their samples, pick up food and trinkets,
and set out up the valley to look for a human habitation.

They started back down the slope.  The man was within a hundred yards
of the great torpedo shape.  Seeing the four coming down the hill, he
ducked behind a boulder.  He remained there until Gribardsun opened the
port of the vessel.  Then he rose and, bending over, ran to a more
distant rock.  Drummond Silverstein took some more films of him.

They packed their bags and strapped them onto their backs.  Gribardsun
took the 500-caliber express rifle.  Von Billmann and Drummond carried
the rifles which shot anesthetic darts.  Rachel carried a 30-caliber
automatic rifle.  Each had an automatic pistol in the holster at his
belt, and they had explosive and gas grenades in their sacks.

They started up the valley and presently came to a small stream which
meandered down to the river below.  They followed along the stream for
a time.  The man kept ahead of them by a quarter of a mile.

At the end of two miles, they decided to climb up through the base of
the cliffs.  There were some overhangs that looked interesting.  These
turned out to have been inhabited by men, judging from the rude hearths
of stone, the bones, flint, and chert fragments, and pieces of wood and
fur.  A half mile on, they found a narrow cave which stank as if hyenas
had once lived there.  Rachel said that she would study it later and
determine what hyenas ate and so forth.  She threw some rocks into the
interior but got no result.

They walked five miles before they came to the man's home.  The valley
suddenly widened here, and the overhang which housed human beings was
at the top of a steep slope.  They could not see any women or children
from this angle, but the twelve men would not have gathered in full
sight on the edge of the hill unless they had something to defend.

Gribardsun looked around before giving the order to ascend.  It seemed
likely that there would be other men out hunting, and he did not want
to be surprised by men attacking from behind.

The man they had first seen had scrambled up ahead of them to warn the
others.  Now he stood with the others, brandishing his spear and
yelling at the invaders.

Gribardsun activated the bullhorn device on his chest and then told the
others to drop about a hundred feet behind him.  He looked for large
rocks on the lip of the hill.  He was ready to jump if they rolled any
down on them.  But there did not seem to be any nor was there evidence
at the foot of the hill that they had rolled any down in the past.

He wondered what the natives were thinking.  There were twelve warriors
there, defending their home territory, and there were only three men
and a woman boldly approaching them.  Their appearance, of course,
would be impressive.  There would be something very alien about the
invaders; the clothes, the weird-looking weapons, the clean-shaven
faces.  Most mystifying, and terrifying, would be the confidence with
which the greatly outnumbered party approached.

Gribardsun had had long experience with savages.  He was much older
than he looked and remembered when Africa and Asia still hid genuine
preliterates with very little knowledge of civilization.  It was this
experience which gave him confidence, because he knew that these people
did not really want to engage in combat with an unknown enemy.  The
others of his party had had little to do with genuine primitives; they
had been born too late; the savages had died out or been citified; the
few left on reservations were too well-educated to be 'real'
primitives.

Nevertheless, the natives were dangerous.  They must have fought enemy
humans and they must have hunted the dangerous mammoth, rhinoceros,
cave bear, and cave lion.

Gribardsun got well within range of the spears before he held up his
hand for the others to stop.  He advanced slowly then, speaking through
the bullhorn.  His voice, like a thunder god's, bellowed at them.  They
stopped yelling and waving their weapons when the first words struck
them.  Even at this distance he could see their flushed skins turn
pale.

He stopped, too, and pulled out a Very gun and fired it straight up
into the air.  The parachute expanded from the stick, at two hundred
feet, and as it fell it burned a bright green and then a bright scarlet
and then exploded loudly at a fifty-foot altitude.

The warriors became rigid and silent.

They must have wanted to run, but that would have meant abandoning the
women and children.  And that they would not do.

Gribardsun approved of this.  Though they must have fell a terrible awe
of this evil magician, yet they stood their ground.

The Englishman held out both hands his express rifle was still
supported by a strap over his shoulder and he advanced smiling.

A tall heavily built man with dark red hair mingled with gray stepped
out of the line and approached Gribardsun slowly.  The brown-haired man
whom the party had followed also came down the slope though he stayed a
few feet behind the red-haired man.  The chief held a big stone axe in
his right hand and a thick-shafted spear in his left.  He was about as
tall as Gribardsun.

The Englishman spoke through the bullhorn again.  At the thundering
speech, the chief and his companion stopped.  But Gribardsun continued
to smile, and then he turned the amplifier off, lowering his hand
slowly so he would not alarm the two.  After that, he raised his hand
and spoke with his normal voice.  The eyes of the two widened at this.
However, they seemed to understand that the change in loudness was
meant to signify friendliness.

Gribardsun walked slowly upward until he was about ten feet from them.
At this range, he could see that both were quivering.  But it was the
alien ness of the intruders that was making them shake, not the
prospect of combat.

Gribardsun talked and at the same time made signs to reinforce the
words.  He used the sign language of the Kalahari bushmen, not because
he expected the sign language of these people if they had any to
coincide but because the signs would be additional reassurances of his
peaceful intentions.

He told them that the four came from a far place and that they brought
gifts and that they were friends.

The chief finally smiled and lowered his weapons, though he still kept
his distance.  The other man also smiled.  The chief turned, still
watching Gribardsun out of the corner of his eyes, and shouted at the
warriors above.  Then he beckoned Gribardsun to follow him, and he and
the brown-haired man preceded the four.  At the top they found
themselves ringed by the warriors but these made no threatening
gestures.

The four could now see that there was a large camp under the immense
limestone overhang.  The north end was blocked by stones piled on top
of each other and part of the eastern end was also blocked.  There were
about thirty 'wigwams," tents of skin supported by wooden poles, near
the rear of the overhang.  Gribardsun counted thirty adult women, ten
juvenile girls, six juvenile males, and thirty-eight children.  Later,
when hunters returned, the total adult male population would be
twenty-four.

There were small fires in every hearth and wooden spits over many, some
of which held skinned and gutted rabbits, marmots, birds, and parts of
a bear.  In one corner was a wooden cage in which was a bear cub.
Before one of the tents was a pole held up by a pile of rocks and dirt.
Stuck on its end was a bear skull easily as large as the largest of the
Kodiak bears of Gribardsun's time.  Gribardsun wondered if the skull
and the cub meant that the tribe had a bear cult.

Water would have to be brought up from the river.  A number of skin
bags on the dirt floor seemed to hold water.

There were bones all over the place, and a strong odor from the north
indicated that human excrement was dropped over the edge of the hill on
the other side of the rude wall.  The odor of the natives, and their
matted hair and beards and dirty skins, showed that they cared little
for personal cleanliness.

Gribardsun walked over to the nearest tent and looked inside without
objection from anybody.  There were very low beds with wooden frames
and furs piled on top.  On one lay a boy of about ten.  He stank of
sickness.

Gribardsun crawled into the tent after telling Rachel to hold the skin
flap open for him.  The boy looked at him with glazed eyes.  He was too
sick to be frightened by the stranger.

A woman shouted something outside and then crawled in to watch the
stranger.  She was making sure that the mysterious man with the voice
like thunder did not intend to harm her child.

Gribardsun smiled at her but also made a gesture for her not to
interfere.

He put a reflector on his head and shone a light into the boy's eyes
and down his throat and into his ears.  The boy submitted though he
trembled with fear.

Gribardsun had to decide whether or not to take samples of skin tissue,
blood, saliva, and urine.  So many of the preliterate societies he had
known had objected to giving specimens.  They feared that these would
be used against them by evil magic.  If this tribe had the same
superstitions, it might react violently, no matter how awed they were
at this moment.

He considered.  The flat instrument he had applied to the boy's skin
indicated a fever of 104 Fahrenheit.  The skin was flushed and dry. The
breath was foul.  The heartbeat was eighty-five per minute.  The
breathing was rapid and shallow.  These symptoms could mean a dozen
different diseases.  He needed specimens for a diagnosis.

He could just back off and let nature, or whatever the local witch
doctor might have in the way of efficacious medicine, do its work.  He
had been warned that he should not get involved with medical matters if
he thought that his interference might backfire.  After all, everybody
he would meet was doomed to die, would have been dead for almost
fourteen thousand years when he was born.  But procedure was left to
his discretion.  If he thought he could cure a sick native, and thereby
aid the goal of the project, he could proceed.  But if he did not wish
to endanger the project, he could just let the natives die.

There was no question of concern about his interference changing the
course of events.  Whatever he was to do had been done, and events and
lives had been determined before he was born even if he had helped
determine them.

Gribardsun's back kept the mother from seeing what he was doing.  She
said something in a protesting tone, but he paid no attention.  He
stuck the tip of the instrument against the arm, twisted a little knob
on its side, the syringe filled with blood.  He drew off some saliva
from the boy's open mouth.  Getting urine would be difficult only if
the mother objected.  He secured another instrument at the proper
place, and pressed a button plunger on the end of a flexible metal
tube.  If there was any urine available, it would come out without
delay, and it did.  He removed the instrument and packed it away.  When
he returned to the vessel, he would make his analyses.  Rather, the
small medical computer in the ship would.  And tomorrow, if things went
right here today, he would transport the computer-analyzer to this
site.

The mother protested some more, but she crawled out of the tent a
moment later.  Perhaps she was going to the chief and the medicine man.
He took advantage of her absence to drop a pill into the boy's mouth,
raise his head, and pour ill-smelling water into his mouth from a skin
bag.

The pill was a general panacea a redundancy in terms which could slow
down the development of a dozen diseases.  It might not contain
anything to help whatever was making the boy sick, but there was
nothing in it to hurt him.

Outside, the woman was talking rapidly and loudly and gesticulating to
the chief and a short muscular man with a forehead covered with symbols
painted with ocher.  The symbols matched those on the skin of the tent.
This man had just come in from the hunt.  His woman was carrying off
two rabbits and a large badger.

Two more men climbed over the edge of the hill.  One, a huge man with
the massive muscles and the pot-belly of a gorilla, was carrying part
of a large male reindeer over his shoulders.  The other, shorter and
less stout, was carrying a smaller portion over his shoulders and a
marmot tied by the neck to his belt.

The two stopped when they saw the strangers.  The carcass dropped with
a thump and a clash of antlers against a hearth, and the giant advanced
toward them.  The chief said something to him, and the giant stopped,
scowling.

The first thing to do was to establish 'identities."  Gribardsun got
them to pronounce or try to pronounce their names.  They did better
with John than with his surname.

The chief was Thammash.  The brown-haired man was Shivkaet, the tribal
artist.  The painted man was Glamug, the witch doctor or shaman.  The
giant was Angrogrim.  The sick boy was Abinal, son of Dubhab.  Dubhab
showed up during the name-learning.  He was a short lean man with a
wide friendly smile, and he seemed to be the most articulate of his
people.  He introduced others, including Laminak, his daughter, a
pre-teenager, and Amaga, his wife.

Gribardsun told his colleagues it was time to go back to the vessel.
They would not stay too long today.  Despite their violence-free
reception, they were putting the natives to a strain.  They would
retreat and let the tribe discuss the strangers.  Tomorrow they would
return and stay a little longer.  And the day after they would increase
the length of their visit even more.  In time, the natives would get
used to them.

Von Billmann said, "I can hardly wait to study their language.  Did you
catch that synchronic articulation of the nasal bilabial and the velar
bilabial and the ejective consonants with simultaneous glottal
stops?"

"I caught them," Gribardsun said.

Rachel rolled her large blue eyes and said, "I think I'm going to have
trouble speaking their language anywhere near correctly.  The sounds
sound impossible."

Drummond said, "Robert, you look as excited as if you were about to
make love."

"Which he is, in a way," Gribardsun said.

They left, while the tribe gathered on the edge of the hill to watch
them.  Some of the small boys started down after them but were called
back by their parents.  The people stood together and watched them
until they were out of sight.

They were not very talkative on the way back.  Von Billmann had stuck
the speaker of his pocket recorder-player into his ear and was
listening to the sound of the language over and over.  Rachel and
Drummond spoke infrequently and then softly to each other.  Gribardsun
seldom talked much unless the occasion demanded it.

However, when they returned to the H. G. Wells I, their spirits rose.
Perhaps it was because they were home.  Even the grim gray torpedo
shape was a haven and reminder of the world they had left.

"We'll sleep here tonight," Gribardsun said.  "We can put up our domes
later on.  Obviously we can't walk back and forth to the village every
day, and we can't move the vessel, so we'll have to establish camp
close to our subjects."

Rachel busied herself getting supper, though this took only two minutes
to cook and open the prepared packages.  She did pour out small glasses
of wine to celebrate.  Gribardsun ran the specimens through the
analyzer while she was getting supper.

"The boy, Abinal, has typhus," he said.  "That can be caused by a
rickettsia or body lice.  I didn't see anybody else sick, so I doubt
that it was caused by body lice, though Abinal may just be the first.
Whatever the cause, he can transmit it through his own body lice.  I
propose tomorrow to give Abinal an anti-typhus medicine and to give the
others a preventative.  Plus a medicine which will kill their body
lice."

"How do you propose to get them to take the medicines?"  von Billmann
said.

"I don't know yet."

"It might cause more trouble than it's worth," Drummond said.  "Not
that I'm ignoring the human side of this," he added, seeing Rachel's
frown.  "But, after all, we want to study them in their natural habitat
and in their natural mode of life as much as possible.  If we prevent
diseases, how will we know how they react to them?  I mean, what
medicines and magical rituals they use, their burial ceremonies and so
forth.  You know they're going to die anyway in fact, they've been dead
for a long time, actually.  And what kind of resentments will you stir
up if you interfere with the shaman's profession or fail to cure a sick
person?  You might even get blamed for the death."

"That's true," Gribardsun said.  "But if the tribe is wiped out by
typhus, or some other disease, then we have no tribe to study, no
language to learn.  And nobody to help us haul the vessel to the top of
the hill.  I'm taking what they used to call a calculated risk."

Rachel looked curiously at him and said, "Every once in a while you use
an old-fashioned phrase.  Not self-consciously but as if well, I don't
know.  You roll them out as if you were to the phrase born, if you know
what I mean."

"I read a lot," he said.  "And I have a tendency to repeat some of the
good old phrases."

"I'm not deprecating it," she said.  "I like to hear them.  It's just
that they startle me.  Anyway, supper's on.  Let's have a little toast
first.  John, you're our chief; you propose it."

He raised his glass and said, "Here's to the world we love, whatever
she may be."

They drank down the wine.  Rachel said, "That's a strange toast,
John."

"John's a strange man," Drummond said, and he laughed.

Gribardsun smiled slightly.  He knew that Silverstein resented his
wife's obvious admiration for him, but he did not think that the issue
would be an irritating one, even if they were forced to be together for
four years.  The scientists in charge of the project had studied their
compatibility charts and were well satisfied with them.  Nobody on the
expedition was psychologically unstable, as far as the tests could
determine.

If Drummond got out of line, he would have to be straightened out.  He
was a reasonable man, except where his wife was concerned.  And even
there he could be reassured.  Gribardsun was sure of that.  It was only
in the last few weeks before the launching of the H. G. Wells I that
Drummond had started to show signs that he thought his wife admired
Gribardsun more than she should.  Even then he had expressed himself in
only mild oblique remarks.  Several mornings, he and Rachel had looked
as if they had not slept well the night before.  Gribardsun had thought
of asking for their withdrawal before the day of launching got too
close.  But the two had not let whatever was bothering them interfere
with their duties, and he knew how deeply they would be hurt if they
were taken off the project.  So he had said nothing to his superiors.

"We'll get up early," he said.  "Seven o'clock, ship's time.  After
breakfast we'll tramp around and collect some more specimens.  Then
we'll visit our natives.  But I think we can establish even better
relations if we take them some meat."

After eating, they went outside.  The sun was just touching the
horizon.  The air was very cold.  A herd of about thirty reindeer, a
couple of huge rhinoceroses, twelve adult mammoths and three babies,
and a dozen bison were by the river.  At this distance they looked like
small animated toys.

The four were thrilled at their first sight of the rhinos and mammoths.
There were still elephants in zoos and reservations in their world, but
the mammoths with the hump of fat on their heads and shoulders and the
curved tusks were quite different.  And the rhinos were extinct in the
twenty-first century.

"There're some wolves!"  Rachel said.

She pointed, and they saw a dozen of the gray shapes floating out of
the shadows of a hill.  The reindeer raised their heads, and the faint
trumpeting of the mammoths reached the four.  But the wolves ignored
them and trotted to a spot about sixty yards down from the herbivores.
There they drank, and the herbivores continued to drink, though
watching the wolves nervously.

The sky above passed from pale blue to dark blue to sable.  The stars
came out.  Drummond Silverstein made sightings, then set out his
telescope and camera.  Rachel stayed out with him.  Von Billmann
returned to the vessel to listen some more to the sounds of his new
language.  Gribardsun took his express rifle and walked back up the
hill.  By the time he reached the top, the half moon had appeared.  It
looked exactly like the moon he knew, except that he knew that no men
were burrowed deep in its rock and no domes or spacecraft were on its
surface.

He faced the wind, which was blowing at about six miles an hour from
the northwest.  It also brought sounds: from far off a lion's roar;
nearer, a small cat's scream; the snorting of some large beast, rhino
or bison; the clatter of hoofs on rocks to the west.  The lion roared
again and then was silent.  He smiled.  It had been a long time since
he had heard a lion roaring.  This one was deeper than any he had
known; the cave lion was somewhat larger than the African.  A mammoth
trumpeted shrilly from near where the lion's roar had come.  Then there
was silence.  After a while he heard a fox bark.  He lingered a few
more moments, drinking in the rising moon and the pure air, and then he
returned to the ship below.  Drummond Silverstein was putting away his
astronomical equipment.  Rachel had gone.

"I like this world already," Gribardsun said.  "I knew I would.  It's
simple and savage and uncrowded with humans."

"Next you'll be saying you want to stay behind when we leave,"
Silverstein said.

He sounded as if he did not altogether disapprove of the idea.

"Well, if a man wants to know this time thoroughly, hell have to stay
here the rest of his life," Gribardsun said.  "He could explore Europe
and then cross the land bridge to Africa.  As I understand it, the
Sahara is a green and wet land with rivers full of hippos.  And the
sub-Sahara, my old stamping ground, is a paradise of animal life.  And
there might even be a few subhumans left, roaming the savannahs or the
forests."

"That would be self-indulgent and suicidal," Drummond said.  "Who would
gain anything from it?  All that data and no one to leave it to."

"I could leave a record of some sort at an agreed-upon place, and you
could pick it up immediately on returning," Gribardsun said.  He
laughed, then picked up a large plastic box containing recording
equipment and followed Silverstein into the vessel.

"You talk like von Billmann," Silverstein said.  "He's grumbling
already because he won't get a chance to locate and record
pre-Indo-Hittite speech.  He's talking of making a trip by himself to
Germany."

"There's nothing wrong with dreaming," Gribardsun said.  "But we're all
scientists and thoroughly disciplined.  We'll do our job and then go
home."

"I hope so," Drummond said as he stowed away his equipment in the
middle cabin.  "But don't you feel something in the air?  Something
...?"

"Wild and free?"  Rachel said.  She was looking at Gribardsun with a
peculiarly intent expression.  "The soul of the primitive is floating
on the air."

"Very poetic," von Billmann said.  "Yes, I feel it too.  I think it's
because we've been living in a cramped and regulated world, and
suddenly we're released with a whole unspoiled world to ourselves, and
we feel like exploding.  It's a psychological reaction that our
psychologists didn't foresee."

Gribardsun did not comment.  He was thinking that if this were true,
then those who originally were the wildest and had repressed the most,
would react the most violently.

The Silversteins let down their wall bunks in the middle room and
closed the port after saying good night.  The other two went to bed.
The vessel was not spacious, but it was designed to be lived in for
four years if the explorers found it necessary.

Gribardsun's ear alarm went off at five A.M."  ship's time.  He rolled
out and did a few sitting-up exercises, ate breakfast, put on clothes,
and left.  He carried an express rifle in one gloved hand and a
short-range rifle which shot anesthetic missiles in a sheath over one
shoulder.  He also carried a big hunting knife and an automatic
pistol.

The air was cold and pale.  The sun had not risen, but it was bright
enough to see everything clearly.  His breath steamed.  He climbed
briskly despite the weight of sack and weapons.  His clothing was thin
and light but very warm.  After a while he had to unzip the front of
the one-piece suit to cool off.

At the top he stopped to look back.  He had left a message for them in
the recorder-player.  He might be back before they awakened.

He turned and trotted away down the gentle slope.  He was exuberant.
This was a wild land, not nearly as vegetation-grown as he would have
liked it, but the open stretches had an appeal.

He had gone perhaps a mile, still trotting, when he flushed out grouse
from a stand of dwarf pines.  A minute later he saw a brownish fox scud
from a ravine and across a field to a hiding place behind a boulder.
Half a mile farther on, he had to swing northward because of six woolly
rhinoceroses, one of which made short savage charges toward him.

He kept on trotting.  The sun rose, but not for long.  Clouds appeared
and covered the sky quickly.  And half an hour later, rain fell
heavily.

His clothing was waterproof.  But the water was cold and chilled his
face.  He passed a herd of vast shapes with humped heads and necks and
great curving tusks.  They were plucking up moss and the large flat
cushions of a plant with white flowers (Dryos octopetda probably),
saxifrage, and the dwarf azaleas, willows, and birch.  He could hear
the rumbling of their stomachs above the downpour.  It was an old sound
and a soothing one.  He felt at home despite the freezing rain.

A little later he came to stands of dwarf pines again.  As the glaciers
retreated northward, the pines would appear in growing numbers.  South,
in lower Iberia, taller pines would be spreading over the land.

Gribardsun had been following the edge of the top of the valley.  When
he was above where he estimated the natives were, he looked over the
edge.  He had stopped almost exactly above them.  The overhang, of
course, hid their dwelling place, but he recognized the hill and the
land below it.  There was no sign of life.  Either the hunters were
staying home because of the rain, which did not seem likely since they
had not been overstocked with meat, or they had already left.  He
resumed his trot but turned northward again, intending to make a circle
and return to the vessel.  He would be late, but that did not matter.
They had their work to do first, and they could still start out for the
site on schedule.  He wasn't worried about the boy, Abinal.  The
panacea he had given him worked against typhus.  Its effect would last
for several more hours.

The rain was as heavy as before.  He splashed along for a while and
then decided to cut straight back to the vessel.  The rain had
discouraged most beasts from coming out.

He turned to the west and started back up the long slope.  As he passed
by a high outcrop of limestone, he slowed down.  If he poked around in
there, he might scare something out.  He stopped and removed his small
motion-picture camera from the bag and took some shots.  Then he went
up to a gap between two tall rocks and threw several stones into it.
Something grunted from deep within.  He backed away and pointed the
camera at the opening.  Nothing, however, emerged.

He threw some more stones inside, heard another grunt, and entered the
gap.  He did not know what was inside.  There were no tracks since
stone covered the entranceway and the rain would, in any event, have
washed away odors.  When he got about twelve feet inside the gap,
however, he smelled bear.  He had installed the camera inside his hood;
its base was secured to a helmet-like arrangement which fitted around
his head and which he had removed from the pack.  Thus, he could take
pictures and at the same time handle his express rifle.  If the light
was too dim to give good pictures, he could always erase the electronic
film.

He did not intend to kill the beast.  He never killed unless he had to
do so for defense or meat.  But he had been so long without adventure
that he could not resist sticking his head into the den.  Later, he
admitted to himself that he had lost his good sense for a moment.  What
did he expect a bear on its home territory to do other than charge the
trespasser?

The beast heard or smelled him, and it snarled.  He went on, his rifle
held out ahead of him.  The gap curved to the left for about ten feet
and then straightened out.  It had narrowed overhead to a thin line and
then, within a few feet, its edges merged.

About that time, either his wits returned or his blood cooled.  He was
not afraid, but he did not want to kill the bear.  What good would it
do anybody?  Then it occurred to him that the meat would not spoil. The
people would walk through the rain to get it, even if it was about five
miles away.  He could block up the entrance with rocks to keep the
hyenas and wolves away.  And this morning's indulgence (that was what
it was) could be justified.

Of course, he could have killed a mammoth or rhino but then the carcass
would have been out in the open and so subject to the carrion eaters.

He grimaced.  He did not have to justify himself to anybody except
himself.

The snarling became a roaring, a huge head with white-edged eyes and
dripping saliva showed itself a few feet ahead of him.  The gap was so
narrow that the great beast had to shove both shoulders against the
walls to get through.  Gribard-!  sun fired the rifle; the noise was
deafening in the tight corridor; the 500 express bullet went through
the skull between the eyes and the beast fell dead.

Another bear behind it, roaring, tried to get at Gribardsun by climbing
over the carcass.  It became stuck in the narrower opening higher up,
and Gribardsun's bullet went into its throat.  It died on top of its
mate.

The Englishman climbed over the top body and into the dark and fetid
chamber.  He turned on a flashlight and inspected the cave.  As he had
expected, there were two cubs.  They cowered in the rear but snarled at
him when he picked them up.  He threw them ahead of him over the
bodies, climbed out again, and then had to chase them down.  He had
expected them to stay close to the bodies of their parents, but they
wanted their freedom.

After catching the cubs, he injected a dormgen shot into each.  While
they snoozed away, he piled large rocks and small boulders over the
entrance to the cave.  Satisfied that hyenas and wolves would have a
hard time getting in to the bodies, he picked the cubs up, one under
each arm, and set off.  He returned at a faster pace and so was only
half an hour behind the time he had promised to return.

The others were worried because he was late, and they were surprised on
seeing the cubs.  Rachel thought they were darling, but she was
concerned about feeding them.

"They're past the nursing period," Gribardsun said.  "Meat and berries
are all they'll need."

He brought out a package which he unfolded on the lee side of the
vessel.  It was a conical framework about three feet high.  He spread a
thin sheet of plastic over it, secured its corners, and then sprayed a
thick coat of foam over the plastic.  The foam dried within ten
minutes, and he sprayed another coat and then another.  The three coats
made a covering four inches thick.  He cut a hole at the base for the
cubs and used the cutout as a swinging door.  The cubs now had a snug
warm house.

The bear house was a smaller scale model of the dwellings that the
humans would erect later on.  These were very light and even Rachel
could carry one for miles, though the size made them awkward to handle.
They could be dragged through the roughest land, however, without
damaging them.  And axles and wheels, also stored in the vessel, could
be attached to them when they were to be moved any distance.

At noon, they were all back at the tribal campsite.  This was to be
referred to in the official reports, and so unofficially among
themselves, as Site A-One or just A-One.  Again, they were confronted
by a number of warriors.  Gribardsun proceeded ahead of his fellows but
much more swiftly this time, as if he expected to be received without
suspicion.  He headed for the tent housing Abinal and entered with a
nod to the mother, Amaga.  Abinal looked much better.  He was
frightened on seeing the stranger, but Gribardsun talked in a soothing
tone while he examined him.  He gave the boy another pill, but the boy
refused to swallow it.

Gribardsun, smiling, took out another and swallowed it to show Abinal
that it was harmless.

Abinal still turned his face away, and his mother jabbered away at
Gribardsun.  It seemed she was trying to get him to leave the boy
alone.

Gribardsun made signs indicating that Abinal would die if he did not
take the pill.  He also indicated that the others would die, too, but
he was not sure that he was getting his message across.

He left the tent because it was obvious that Abinal was too scared of
him to do anything he was going to suggest.  Rachel was taking films of
a woman skinning a marmot.  Drummond was knocking off samples of rocks
with a pick while a crowd of children watched him along with several of
the men.  Robert von Billmann had given an old white-haired woman, who
probably wasn't much over fifty-five, some meat, and she was teaching
him the language.  She was showing him various objects as referents.

Gribardsun decided that their camp should be set up about a
quarter-mile down the valley.  There was a slight overhang halfway up a
steep hill that would give them protection from the weather.  They
would be close enough to visit the site without wasting much travel
time.  But they would not be so close that the natives would feel that
the aliens were sitting on top of them.

Gribardsun entered the tent again.  The boy was being fed by his
sister, Laminak, who appeared to be about twelve years old.  She looked
up startled when Gribardsun came in, but she smiled at him.  He smiled
back at her and, squatting, felt Abinal's pulse.  It was seventy-six,
and his skin was warm but moist.  Gribardsun stood up and turned away
and inserted a panacea into the spout of a bag of water.  That the pill
would be much diluted did not matter.  It was extremely powerful.
Moreover, if the others drank from the bag, that was all the better.
Gribardsun would have liked to dope all the water bags.

The boy said something, and the girl stood up and faced the Englishman.
She spoke to him in a protesting manner.  He understood, after a
minute, that Abinal had seen him drop something into the water.
Gribardsun did not try to deny it.  He tried instead to demonstrate,
with sign language, that he meant to make Abinal well.

Laminak called out, and Amaga, her mother, entered.  There wasn't much
room to stand in the tent then.  Gribardsun bent over and went out
through the narrow, low opening.

"What's going on in there?"  Rachel asked.

Gribardsun told her, and she said, "If you get them upset, then we lose
our chance to study them at close range."

"And if they all die, then we lose our chance too," he said.  "Besides,
I can't see letting anyone die if I can prevent it.  Even if..."

"Even if they're going to die anyway and, in one sense, are already
dead?"  Rachel said.

He smiled and said, "In that sense, we also are already dead.  And we
know it!  But that doesn't stop us from trying to live forever, does
it?"

Amaga came out of the tent with the bag of water.  She walked to the
end of the ledge and poured the water down the hillside.  Then, after a
quick but triumphant glance at the Englishman, she went back into the
tent.

"They won't accept my help," he said.  "They're afraid I'll get control
of them if they take my medicine, I suppose.  And so Abinal may die."

"It's a matter of timing," she said.  "If we had only gotten here a
week or so sooner, they might have accepted your medicine when Abinal
got sick.  But..."

Gribardsun was not one to dwell long on what-if's.  If he could not
help Abinal now, then he would work to establish confidence in himself
through the tribe's elders.  He might be able to help Abinal later on.
If it was too late then, so be it.

Through sign language, he communicated to the adult males that he had
killed two bears or two large ferocious animals and that they should
follow him to the scene of the kill.  They were reluctant.  Then,
understanding at last that they were afraid to leave the women and
children while any of the four stayed behind, he told the others they
would have to come with him.  Von Billmann protested, but Gribardsun
said that their work would go better if he could make these people
grateful to him.

Gribardsun also suggested that those women who could be spared should
come along with them.  After about twenty minutes, they set out with
the four aliens in the lead.  The natives were still suspicious, but
the image of all that meat was too tempting.

Long before he reached the site, Gribardsun knew that someone had been
at the bears.  Through the slight drizzle, he saw that the stones he
had piled up had been torn down and rolled away.

He entered the gap in the rocks slowly, cautiously.  There were no
humans there, and only parts of the bears remained.  The entrails had
been left behind, and there was blood on the rocks here and there.
However, the robbers had done a relatively neat job.

Gribardsun paid no attention to the furious chatter of the disappointed
men and women nor their reproachful expressions.  He cast around the
area past the rocky floor until he found a footprint in the half-frozen
mud.  It was filling in swiftly, but there was enough of an outline to
show him that a large man with boots or some kind of shoes had slipped
off a rock and stepped into the mud.

He went north and within a hundred yards found that a bear's paw had
trailed in the mud for several feet.  It must have slipped off the
shoulders of the man carrying it.

"There must be quite a few in the party," he said to von Billmann,
"Those bears together weigh over two thousand pounds, and while they
were cut into smaller pieces, no ten men are going to carry the pieces
away.  I wonder why I wasn't attacked.  They must have been watching me
while I blocked the gap."

He decided that it was because he was a queerly clothed stranger, and
also because they might have been scared by the firing of the rifle.

There was a shout, and they looked up to see a band of six hunters
approaching them.  These were Glamug, the shaman, Shivkaet, Angrogrim,
Gullshab, Dubhab, and the chief, Thammash.  They carried pieces of two
reindeer wrapped in the skinned-off hides of the animals.

There was a loud and fierce conference with frequent glances and
gesticulations at the four strangers.

By now, Gribardsun and von Billmann had learned that the basic word for
an adult male bear was wotaba and for a female adult bear was ivotaimg.
There were frequent references to both, and Gribardsun could not
understand this.  Perhaps they knew from the entrails and the single
mark of the claw that the animals were bears, but how did they know the
sex of each?  Then he remembered that some of them had gone into the
cave and must have deduced from evidence there that there were beasts
of two sexes.  He would find out their method of detection when he
learned the language.

He interrupted the angry conference by bellowing through the bullhorn
at them.  Then he made signs that he would follow the robbers and
indicated that he would like some of them to join him.  The robbers
could not be too far ahead, even if they had started to work
immediately after he left the cave.  They would be heavily burdened.

The Silversteins were upset at the turn of events.  Von Billmann
appeared ready to do whatever Gribardsun wanted.  The Englishman told
the Silversteins to return to the campsite with the natives.  He and
the German, and some of the men, if they would agree, would track the
robbers.

"But we can't get involved in the quarrels of these people!"  Drummond
said.  "We don't want to get into the position of having to take sides!
Maybe even having to kill their enemies!"

"We'll have to play favorites," Gribardsun said.  "There's no way of
getting away from it.  Moreover, the more deeply these people are in
our debt, the sooner they'll open up for us.  We can't stay neutral."

"You have no right to shoot those men!"  Drummond Silverstein said.

"Who said I would shoot them?"  Gribardsun said, staring hard at
Silverstein.  "Why don't you ask me what I intend to do instead of
making your assumptions?"

"I'm sorry," Silverstein said.  "Perhaps I'm wrong.  But I don't see
how you can attempt to take all that meat away from these savages
without having to fight them."

"I have to re-establish our prestige," the Englishman said.  "Otherwise
we'll never be able to know these people inside and out.  I've said
that twice.  Once should be enough."

He turned away.  "Come on, Robert."

Four of the tribesmen joined them, among them Thammash and the giant
Angrogrim.  They set out northward with the Englishman in the lead.  He
trotted along, looking to both sides for signs.  After a mile he saw a
track, and a little farther on where a man had spit.  Then they entered
a morass which held many prints.  Gribardsun thought that the party was
composed of fourteen men.

They crossed a plain while going toward some hills about a hundred feet
high on the horizon.  In the distance, to both left and right, were
herds of gray-brown mammoths and brownish reindeer.  A pack of a dozen
hyenas skulked along behind the reindeer.  A brown-gray fox sped across
the plain after a hare and presently caught it.  And then Gribardsun
saw their quarry far across the plain.  They were all, except for six
rear guard men, half covered with parts of the bears.

Gribardsun slowed his pace to allow von Billmann to draw even with him.
Von Billmann was panting, though he had gone through the rigorous
yearlong physical training prior to the launching.  The hunters trotted
along, their breaths slightly steaming as the late afternoon turned
even colder, the slush splashing over their bare legs.  They did not
seem in the least hard pressed.

"The two tribes would have come into contact sooner or later anyway,"
Gribardsun said.  "One of them probably has only recently moved into
this territory.  I intend to scare this one away so our subject-study
will be left alone."

"But we want to study their war patterns, too," von Billmann said.

"That can come later."

As he ran he was taking films of the men ahead, the area around, and of
the men trotting along behind.  He ran backward as swiftly as he ran
forward while he filmed those behind.  By the time they got across the
plain, they had lost their quarry, vanished up a pass between two low
hills.  Here were dead winter grasses with lichen on the rocks and
dwarf birches and pines and some beds of saxifrage.  A black-and-white
badger waddled away from them as they ran into the pass.

Gribardsun supposed that the men they were following had seen them, so
he halted his party after it had gone a few yards into the pass. Ahead,
the hills grew taller and started to move closer.  A brook about five
feet wide followed the middle of the pass downward toward the plain,
where it suddenly turned and followed the edge of the hills toward the
west.

Gribardsun in the lead, his express rifle ready, the party moved slowly
up the pass.  He expected an ambush, but they got through the pass
without incident.  They came out onto a small valley which had been
formed by a small river.  Across the river, up near the top of the hill
opposite, was an overhang.  This was walled on two sides with piles of
stones, and in between were skin tents, tiny at this distance, and a
blue haze of smoke under the projecting rock.  The robbers were fording
the river, and the rear guards were waving at those under the overhang.
And, no doubt, they were shouting an alarm.

By the time the invaders reached the bottom of the valley, they could
hear the shrilling of bone whistles and flutes and the beat of
skin-and-wood drums.

The four tribesmen were looking at each other out of the corners of
their eyes and muttering.  They were glad to stop at the river when
Gribardsun paused to take stock.

"It's not just a matter of a territorial imperative," von Billmann
said.  "We're heavily outnumbered.  I'm surprised they've gone this far
with us."

"They know from my signs that I have killed two bears so they must have
some faith in my skill, even if they don't know how it was done,"
Gribardsun said.  "But I wouldn't be surprised if they ran anyway."

The ledge under the overhang was alive with men brandishing weapons.
Other men, hunters returning, were hastening up the hill to join the
defense.  The defense, Gribardsun thought, which may soon become an
offense.  There are only six of us.  However, the robbers must believe
that one of the invaders had killed two bears with a loud noise.  And
that meant that the noisemaker was a powerful magician.  He would have
control over great and mysterious forces.  And it was their fear of
these forces that Gribardsun depended upon in his plan.

The four natives, however, did not cross the ford.  They stood on the
bank and gazed apprehensively at the display of spears and dubs on the
ledge.  Gribardsun turned when he was across the river, shouted at them
and made encouraging motions.  But they would not follow.

The Englishman took the small Very pistol from his sack, loaded it, and
fired it into the air.  The explosions and colors silenced the noisy
mob on the ledge.  Before the flare had parachuted to the ground, the
four natives were across the river and standing by Gribardsun's side.
They looked pale and grim, but they had evidently decided that it would
not be good to offend this witch doctor.

The six advanced slowly up the hillside.  Halfway up, they halted.  The
defenders were behind a row of large boulders along the rim of the
ledge, undoubtedly only waiting to shove them over once the intruders
were closer.

Gribardsun emptied his express rifle and reloaded with five
high-explosive bullets.  He aimed at the center boulder on the ledge
and fired the bullets, one after the other.

The boulder was a heap of fragments.

The warriors had disappeared.

Gribardsun reloaded with explosive bullets and continued climbing.
Before reaching the ledge, however, he stopped and shot three times
into the overhang just underneath its edge.  Several large pieces of
rock fell off.  Screams followed the explosions, and warriors, women,
and children deserted the site.  They fled in two streams down the
sides of the ledge and on down the hillside, falling, leaping up again,
yelling, shrilling mindlessly.

"I hope they don't hurt themselves," Gribardsun said.

Their four natives were whooping with joy and slapping each other on
the back or the thighs.  Then Angrogrim started toward the refugees on
their right.  He held his spear high, shaking it, and screaming threats
at them.

Gribardsun called after him, but the giant continued to run toward the
refugees.  The Englishman fired into the air, and Angrogrim turned to
see what he was doing.  Gribardsun gestured fiercely at him to come
back.  Scowling, the giant obeyed.  Gribardsun shook his finger at him
and scolded him as if he were a child.  Angrogrim looked down at him as
if he thought he was very odd.  But he did not protest, and when he saw
the others continue their climb, he followed them.

At the top, they looked around the deserted site.  Von Billmann used
his movie camera.  Gribardsun looked cautiously through the tents and
found an old man and woman cowering in one and a sick five-year-old
child in the other.  He got the child to swallow a panacea and then ran
the diag noser over his body and took a sample of blood.

The old couple were almost toothless, and the woman was blind.  Both
shook so violently that they could not answer when Thammash spoke to
them.  Finally, the woman replied, and Thammash raised his eyebrows,
shrugged his shoulders, and turned his palms upward.  It was evident
that he did not understand the woman's language.

Von Billmann made signs that Thammash should continue to elicit speech
from the couple.  But Thammash was more interested in loot.  He and the
others were busy prowling around, inspecting and appropriating flint
and bone spearheads, atlatls, bone fishhooks, and needles and bone and
ivory figurines.

Gribardsun watched them carefully, and when he saw Gullshab enter the
tent of the sick child, he went after him.  He was just in time to stop
him from plunging his spear into the boy's solar plexus.  Gullshab was
somewhat resentful, but he understood that the child was not to be
harmed, and he passed the message along to the others.

However, Angrogrim did not think that the restriction applied to the
old couple.  He picked up a club and started toward the oldsters' tent
but stopped when Gribardsun shouted at him.  He threw the club down
angrily and walked off.

Gribardsun made signs that each should pick up a piece of bear and
start back.  It would be dusk within half an hour.  It was evident that
they would have to leave at least half of the bear meat behind, so
several of the men started to foul it.  Gribardsun ordered them to
stop, and when they pretended they did not understand him, he made
threatening signs.  Reluctantly, they turned away and hoisted the meat
they had chosen onto their shoulders.

"I just wanted to scare the strangers away so we could recover some of
the meat and thus impress both parties," Gribardsun said.  "I see no
reason why we can't contact these people later and perhaps conduct
studies of them, too."

Gribardsun hoisted a hind leg of cave bear upon his shoulder and led
his band back down the hill.  The refugees had halted their mad flight
and the two groups were now standing near the bottom of the hill and
watching the strangers.  The six men proceeded slowly and carefully
under their burdens, unhindered by the two groups.  After they had
crossed the river, they did hear threatening shouts but these were mere
bravado.  None of the shouters ran after them to throw spears.

Darkness fell swiftly.  The wind died down, but the air got even
colder.  A lion roared about half a mile to the west.  A mammoth
trumpeted shrilly.  Something snorted deeply behind a hillock.

The four natives talked to each other in low but happy voices and
occasionally said something to Gribardsun or von Billmann.  They did
not expect to be understood, but they just wanted the two to know that
they were not being excluded from the geniality.

Gribardsun turned on his flashlight, causing the men to moan with awe.
They dropped behind for a while as if they were afraid of the light.
But when a lion coughed about a hundred yards in their rear, they
crowded upon the Englishman's heels.

Their entrance to the campsite was a victorious one.  The Silversteins
turned their flashlights on them as they came up the hillside, and then
torches flared as the people streamed down to shout with joy at the
sight of the meat.  Once on the ledge under the overhang, the four men
recounted their adventures.  The others looked with awe at Gribardsun.
Gribardsun took advantage of his increased prestige to enter the tent
where Abinal lay and give him another panacea.  Abinal was sicker, and
Gribardsun was not sure that the pill would do him much good.  In fact,
he would not have been surprised if the boy were dead by morning.  He
hoped not.  Aside from his human concern, he didn't want to be blamed
for the boy's death.  He did not like the looks which Glamug, the
shaman, gave him when he came out of the tent.  If the boy lived,
Glamug would try to take the credit.  If the boy died, Glamug would put
the responsibility on the stranger.

The shaman had put on a headband of grouse feathers and, with a bag
full of medicine-magic objects and a reindeer's bladder filled with
pebbles tied to the end of a stick, was dancing slowly around the tent.
He chanted in a shrill voice while he danced.  Amaga, the mother, stood
by the flap of the tent with a pine torch and waved it around in
circles.  The father, Dubhab, had painted his forehead with a mixture
of wood ash and some dark clay, but he took no part in the ceremony. He
sat by a hearth and ate roast bear and seemed to be cracking jokes with
some of his hearth mates

After a while Glamug, tired by the day's hunting and the trek after the
stolen meat, flopped down by the hearth.  Rachel quit taking films of
the ceremony.  Drummond squatted by a hearth and chewed on a piece of
bear meat while his black eyes moved from side to side.  He looked
tired and had already mentioned that he would like to go home.  Robert
von Billmann was recording a speech by Dubhab, who seemed to be telling
of the raid.

The villagers (Gribardsun was thinking of the place as a village) were
occupied in having a good time, though some were busy with chores that
could not be put off.  Some young mothers were suckling their babies,
which were wrapped up in furs.  A middle-aged woman had stuffed herself
with meat and now was chewing on a piece of skin to make it soft.  An
hour and a half passed, and most had crawled into their tents and tied
down the flaps to keep out the wind.  The fires in the hearths were
covered with ashes; the coals would be revivified in the morning.

Dubhab and Amaga and the girl, Laminak, had retired into the tent with
the sick boy.  Glamug danced again around the tent, chanting in a low
voice, shaking his rattle, and occasionally making a sign at the four
major points of the compass.  He folded his thumb and two middle
fingers together and extended his little finger and index finger.  All
four of the scientists noted the sign; it was indeed an ancient one.

Glamug soon tired again.  But he did not enter his tent, even though
his wife had stuck her head out from time to time and looked at him as
if she wished he would come home.  Glamug got a huge bison fur and
wrapped himself in it while he sat in front of the sick boy's tent. His
head was hidden in a great fold of the fur, but one hand was out in the
cold, holding the reindeer bladder.  Evidently he was on duty all
night, guarding against the spirit of sickness and death.

The scientists decided to call it a day.  They started out on the cold
and weary walk to the vessel.  The village was quiet; there were no
guards; even Glamug was snoring in the depths of his robe.

The next morning they ate a good breakfast and rehashed the previous
day's events.  Rachel and Gribardsun fed the bear cubs and played with
them a little.  Rachel seemed happier than the day before.  Gribardsun
wondered if it was because she was with him.  She smiled much at him,
laughed at almost everything he said, and reached out and put her hand
on his arm or shoulder and once moved her fingertip along his jaw.  He
was aware that yesterday's events had raised him even further in her
esteem.  Whatever was driving the Silversteins apart was carrying her
toward him.  He did not believe that he was the original force that had
split them.  But he might get blamed before they settled their
troubles.

He decided that he would have to talk seriously to her, perhaps to both
of them, apart or together, and straighten them out.  But he did not
think that now was the time for it.  He would put it off for a while.
If he did so, then her interest in him might die away, or she might
find means to sublimate it, or she and her husband might come to terms
with their differences.  He believed much in allowing time to effect
cures.

The next job was to move the building materials to the site chosen for
their camp.  Carrying large packs, they hiked to the ledge, where it
took them only an hour to erect two beehive-shaped buildings.  Since
these were so light that a strong wind could carry them away, they were
enclosed around the bases with piles of stones.  And some small
boulders were placed on the floor inside to secure them even further.
The Silversteins moved into one building; the Englishman and German
into the other.

At noon they returned to the vessel and packed more materials.  They
carried these to the 'village," where the women and children and a few
men crowded around them in wonder.  The people were amazed at the
spraying and hardening of the foam.  Only after some talk among
themselves did they get courage enough to approach and touch the
plastic.  They watched as the four piled stones around these and placed
some heavy ones inside.  Gribardsun cut out the door and replaced it
with hinges and a lock.  This dome was to hold artifacts and records
and specimens and to serve as a temporary home and workshop. Gribardsun
walked around it twelve times chanting Carroll's The Hunting of the
Snark and making meaningless gestures.  He hoped by doing this to
convince the villagers that magic was being invoked to protect the
dome.

After that, he went in Abinal's tent and found the boy sitting up and
eating meat from a bone.  The boy, who had been laughing with his
sister, fell silent as Gribardsun entered.  But Laminak spoke a few
words to him, and he relaxed somewhat.  Gribardsun examined him,
noticing that the boy shrank from the touch of his fingers.  But his
sister jollied him, and she even spoke to Gribardsun, though she knew
he could not understand her.

When the Englishman and the girl left the tent, he pointed at various
people or objects and asked Laminak their names.  She caught on and
entered the game with enthusiasm.  She was a pretty girl in spite of
the dirt and the cumbersome fur she wore.  Her hair was waist-length,
wavy, and would, if washed, have been a rich chestnut color.  Her face
was broad but her nose was medium in size and well shaped.  Her lips
were full and grease-smeared, like those of her fellows, to avoid
chapping.  Her breasts were just beginning to swell.  She had large
dark eyes that looked merry most of the time.  And she seemed to lack
the fear for him that the others had.

He liked her very much, and this liking reinforced her attitude to him.
She was intelligent; she was soon putting the names of objects into
short sentences for his benefit.  Or, rather, as he discovered,
incorporating them into words, since the language of the Wota'shaimg
lacked sentences in the English meaning of the word.  A Wota'shaimg
'sentence' was a 'word," a string of syllables or single phones
attached to each other in a certain sequence with the object-term as
the nucleus.

Later, Gribardsun and von Billmann were to agree that the structure of
the speech of the Bear Folk had striking parallels to the structure of
both Eskimo and Shawnee.  The sounds were different, of course, and
Wota'shaimg had no relation to either of those two languages.

Von Billmann, who was fluent in both Basque and Georgian, could
determine no relationship between Wota'shaimg and either of those
languages.  He admitted that his studies of a possible relationship
were superficial and that a deep study by many scholars might reveal a
kinship.  But he doubted it.

Von Billmann's field was Indo-Hittite with Celtic as his
specialization.  But he had been highly trained in other fields,
including American Indian languages.  No one else was as competent as
he to study the middle Magdalenian tongues.

Two

The days and nights went by swiftly.  The sun became hotter, and the
earth bloomed.  The women left the area to dig for roots and collect
medicinal plants and edible berries.  They also tanned the skins their
men brought in, cut them into desired shapes, and sewed them with ivory
or bone needles and thin gut-thread.  They spent endless hours chewing
hides to make them soft.  They smoked meat in little huts on racks.
They worked from dawn to far past dusk.

A baby was born to Gragmirri, a young woman.  Gribardsun wanted to
assist, or at least to make sure that the delivery was sanitary.  But
the birth took place in a specially erected tent to which no men, not
even Glamug, the shaman, were admitted.  And both the baby boy and the
mother did well.  Gragmirri was up and working the second day, and the
men were handling the baby and exclaiming over its fine physique.
Glamug sprinkled some milk on its head, and the bear cub licked the
milk off while the baby cried and Glamug loudly chanted.  By then the
four were versed enough in the language to know that the baby,
Shamkunnap, had been initiated into the tribe.  He was now a member of
the family of the Great Bear, and if he died he would go to a place
where the Great Bear, some sort of ancestral spirit, would provide him
with all the comforts of life.

The four scientists worked almost as hard as the Bear People.  They
made records and films and collected specimens.  Drummond and Rachel
took short field trips.  He studied the geology of the area, she
collected specimens of plant and animal life and of soil and made many
photographs.

The days were getting warm enough so that they need wear only shorts
and shoes.  One day, Gribardsun started to wear native garb entirely.
At this season, that consisted of a skin loincloth and a broad leather
belt.  He even went barefooted, revealing to his fellow scientists feet
with thick calluses on the soles.

"If you had a beard, you could pass for a Wota'shaimg," Rachel said.
She looked admiringly at his powerfully muscled yet beautifully
proportioned body.

"You could play Tarzan in the tri vis she said.

Drummond did not look happy.  He said, "Where in hell did you get those
calluses?"

"I never wore shoes when I lived in Africa," the Englishman said.  "You
know that I spent many years on the Inner Kenyan Sanctuary.  The
natives there were barefoot; so I was barefoot too."

Gribardsun's black hair was shoulder-length after the fashion that had
come in two years before, and he wore bangs across his forehead.  He
looked even more savage than the savages, since his skin was a uniform
bronze but theirs was pale except on the face and the arms.  During the
past few days he had taken to throwing a spear with an atlatl at a
target of wood and grass that he had built.  Though he practiced only
half an hour a day, he was becoming very accurate.  And he could
already throw a spear about twenty yards beyond the best cast of
Angrogrim, the champion of the Wota'shaimg.

This accomplishment did not lessen his attractions for Rachel.

I always thought that the Cro-Magnons, having much sturdier bones for
muscle attachments, would be stronger than modern men," she said.

"These aren't the very early Cro-Magnons," von Billmann said.  "But
even so, they are large, and their constant use of their muscles in
hunting and labor should make them very strong.  In fact, they are
stronger than Drummond or me.  Even their smallest, Dubhab, is
stronger.  But the duke seems to be an exception.  Indeed, if I thought
such a thing possible, I'd say he is an atavism, a throwback.  But he
just happens to be exceptionally powerful."

Von Billmann sometimes referred to the Englishman as the duke, or His
Grace.  The reference was not altogether sarcastic.  Von Billmann had a
high regard for Gribardsun which was not, however, unmixed with envy.

The four were by the riverbank at the bottom of the valley below the
village site.  The German was sitting in a folding chair and
transcribing notes from the playback of his recorder.  Drummond was
breaking open some geodes with his hammer.  Rachel had been collecting
pollen samples, but she had stopped to watch the spear-atlatl
practice.

"John said he meant to take part in the first big hunt," she said.  "He
wants to carry only native weapons."

"Admirable, this desire to get into the subjects' skin," Drummond said,
looking up from an egg-shaped rock.  "But I think he's carrying it too
far.  What if he gets killed?  What benefit will that be to science?"

"I would think you'd like' Rachel said and then closed her mouth.

"Like him to be killed?"  Drummond said in a low but fierce voice.  "Do
you really believe I'm jealous of him?  Should I be?  Have you given me
any reason?"

"Don't be a fool!"  Rachel said.  Her face was red.  She turned and
walked away a few feet but stopped by von Billmann's chair.

"I don't know what's the matter with him!"  she said, half to herself,
half to von Billmann.  "He was acting a little peculiar a few weeks
before we launched.  But since then he's gotten terrible.  Do you think
that there's something about this world, or about being cut off from
his own time, that...?"

"Has Drummond checked the excess or lack of certain ions in the
atmosphere?"

"He has, but I don't remember the results," she said.  "It should have
been the first thing I thought of.  But I haven't noticed any change in
my behavior.  Or yours.  Or John's."

"I don't know about John," von Billmann said.  "I've always detected a
certain je-ne-sais-quoi about John, a certain repressed uh what the
nineteenth-century writers called animal magnetism.  Do you know what I
mean?"

"Yes," she said, looking at Gribardsun as he straightened up after a
throw.  The hand that held the long notched atlatl turned, and the
muscles leaped out along his arm.

"There's something strange about him," von Billmann said.  "I've known
him, off and on, for twenty years.  There's something of the wild beast
about him.  I don't mean that he's bestial, or degraded.  He's one of
nature's gentlemen, to use another archaic phrase.  But there's
definitely something scary deep down under that handsome hide."

"The spear went dead center in the bull's eye," she said.  "I don't see
how anybody using that stick can get any accuracy."

That evening the four sat around a hearth with Dubhab's family and
watched pieces of deer sizzle on the ends of sticks they held.  They
were visiting Dubhab today; tomorrow, Waz-wim's family would be their
hosts.  To avoid any show of favoritism, the four visited each family
by turn.  This rotation also enabled them to become more familiar with
each family.  And, since each had his own pet interests, the visitors
could get a broader view of Magdalenian society.  Dubhab, for instance,
a short, very hairy man with bright blue eyes and thin lips, was a born
trader.  Rather, he was a born confidence man, since he was always
trying to get something for nothing or, at least, for very little.

Dubhab also liked to listen to himself talk and so he would launch into
a lecture on almost any subject if he thought he had an audience.  The
four picked up much information and a lot of superstitions and
misinformation about many things.  But even the folk tales and the
wrong data were information.  They were part of the picture of what the
Wota'shaimg believed.

Amaga was about Dubhab's age, somewhere between thirty-two and
thirty-eight.  She lacked five front teeth and a number of back teeth.
Smallpox had scarred her face, as it had of half the tribe.  Her naked
beasts were huge and pendulous, though she informed them that they had
been high and firm when she was a young woman.  She had married Dubhab
because he seemed to be on his way to the chieftainship.  And he had
been a very good provider.  But later, he talked more than he acted,
and he was always trying to get the better of others in a bargain.  So
he had become just another mediocre hunter, and he talked more than any
woman, and she had, in effect, thrown herself away on him.

She did not say all this in front of Dubhab, of course, because he
would have beaten her if she had demeaned his manhood in public.  But,
inside the walls of her tent, Amaga told him what she told the
strangers.

Abinal, the son, was a 'normal' boy.  He wanted to be a mighty hunter,
and perhaps a chief, and he played at these fantasies when he wasn't
working.  His work consisted of learning to hunt, which was no work at
all for him, and how to pick berries and other plants in the summer. He
shuttled back and forth between learning a man's work and a woman's
work.  When he came of age at twelve or thereabouts he would go through
the rites of passage and no longer help the women.

Laminak's rites would be conducted by the women in the summer in some
place hidden from men's eyes.  In the meantime, she was becoming a
woman without getting official approval.  She worshipped John
Gribardsun and frequently made a nuisance of herself by hanging around
when he wanted private talks with others.  But he did not get angry.

Tonight, Dubhab was trying to get Gribardsun to promise him the horn of
a rhinoceros or the tusks of a mammoth.  Tomorrow, the Wota'shaimg were
going on a big hunt, and the four strangers the Sha'shinq were going
along.  Dubhab was certain that Gribardsun would kill some of the big
game with his loud noise stick, and he wanted a gift.  The horn of a
rhinoceros, set before the tent of a warrior, ensured that that man
would have strength and courage and prosperity.  The tusk of a mammoth
was also valuable for several reasons.

John Gribardsun politely refused several times, saying that whoever
deserved the horns or tusks, according to the customs of the
Wota'shaimg, would get them.  Dubhab argued that it was a certainty
that Gribardsun would kill many with the stick.  Why couldn't he see
his way clear to giving Dubhab at least one?

Finally Gribardsun, irked, said that he did not want to hear any more
about it.  For one thing, he did not plan to use his thunder stick. Von
Billmann would be carrying it, but he would use it only if he had to. 
He, Gribardsun, would be with the hunters and using the same weapons
they used.

Dubhab swallowed his disappointment and managed to smile at the
Englishman.  Gribardsun or Koorik, as he was called, meaning Thunder
Death would be a mighty hunter even with ordinary weapons.  He would
surely slay a dozen great beasts with his spear alone.  Why couldn't
he...?

Gribardsun disliked cutting the man off because of his fondness for
Laminak.  But he stood up, bade them good night, and walked off.  The
others were caught by surprise, but they followed him.  He went to the
fire around which sat Tham-mash, the chief, Wazwim, the singer, Glamug,
the shaman, and Angrogrim, the strong man.  It was the custom that
everyone say good night to the chief before retiring, and Gribardsun
tried to live within the customs as well as he could.

The men had been squatting by the big hearths.  Over this pile of
stones the head men of the Wota'shaimg gathered each evening.  As the
four approached the hearth, the head men stood up.  Glamug got up last,
not because of any reluctance to honor them, but because of his
rheumatism.  Though he might have resented the presence of mightier
magicians, he did not seem to do so.  He had already hinted that if
they had anything to alleviate rheumatism, he would be most grateful.
His dancing was becoming steadily more painful.  Gribardsun had said
that he would see what he could do.  He was studying his medical books
in the late evenings, seeking a cure for Glamug's ailment.  Rheumatism
was unknown in modern days though not when he was a young man.  But he
had paid it no attention then, and when he became an M.D. fairly late
in life, he had never had reason to learn much about it.

The party had been inoculated against every disease supposed to be
rampant in the Pleistocene, but since they were genetically
invulnerable to rheumatism, they had taken no shots nor brought along
any books about the disease.  This was one of the curious omissions
that the expedition ran across every now and then.  It was well known,
from a study of the bones of middle Magdalenian man, that rheumatism
and kindred arthritic diseases were common.  But, somehow, these had
been overlooked.

Actually, the planners could not be blamed.  It was not part of the
expedition's purpose to cure the people they found.  Their primary
mission was to study.  Any good they could scatter along the way would
be up to their individual decisions.

The head men said good night in turn, the chief speaking first.  The
four set off through the darkness, their lights probing ahead.  Near
their camp, they heard squeals and then a chilling laugh.  They hurried
and were in time to see several huge hyenas slink off.  They had been
trying to get into the dome in which the two pet bears were kept.

When the expedition had first come, the hyenas had seemed fairly
common.  But when warmer weather came, the Wota'shaimg had hunted down
all the large predators in the neighborhood, including the hyenas.
These big brutes were dangerous, since they often hunted in packs, were
not at all cowardly, and had jaws stronger than a cave lion's.  But
many of them died, and in a short time they ventured out only at night
in this area.  But the few left did venture quite close to the two
human habitations.

Gribardsun checked to make sure that the bears were unharmed and that
their food and water supply was full.  Then he went into his own dome
with von Billmann after saying good night to the Silversteins.  He fell
asleep quickly but was awakened at three o'clock by his alarm.  He
shook the German awake, and they ate breakfast.  Von Billmann dressed
in hiking clothes with boots, but Gribardsun put on the skin loincloth
and threw a fur cloak over his shoulders.  They went outside, where the
Silversteins were just leaving their home.  They set out for the
overhang, drinking coffee from their thermos and saying little.

At the village, they found a bonfire going, before which the hunters,
adults, and juveniles sat.  The women and children sat about twenty
yards away and made no noise during the ceremony that followed.

The strangers, except for Rachel, sat down at the right end of the
hunters.  Though she was not forbidden to take part in the hunt, she
was not allowed to participate in the ceremony.  She sat with the
women.

As the dawn turned the world blue and green, Glamug came out from his
tent.  He was naked except for a reindeer loin covering, a rhinoceros
skull over his head, and a cloak of bear fur.  His body was painted
with ocher, green, brown, black, and yellow symbols.  One of these was
a swastika with its arms to the right, the good-luck gamma dion  This
was the first time any of the four had seen this, though there were a
variety of other types of crosses painted on the skins of the tents.

Rachel filmed Glamug; Gribardsun made a mental note to comment in the
vessel's log on the earliest recorded appearance of the ancient and
once honorable symbol.

Glamug held in one hand a rhinoceros tail and in the other two small
painted figurines of a rhinoceros and a mammoth.  These were made of
ground bone dust mixed with ocher and bear fat and baked in a small
stone oven.

Glamug danced before the hunters, shaking the rhino tail and
occasionally flicking the hunters in the face with its tip.  He chanted
a song which the Silversteins understood not at all and which the other
two comprehended only partially.  After a while the two men perceived
that the chant was a linguistic fossil, preserved from an earlier stage
of the language.  It was as if a modern Englishman were to sing a song
in Middle English to an audience which did not know what half of the
words meant.  Gribardsun looked at von Billmann, who was grinning with
delight at this treasure trove of speech.

At the end of the ceremony, Glamug cast each of the figurines into the
flame after reciting a short but savage prayer over each figure.  As
the rhino and mammoth figurines were thrown into the fire, the hunters
bellowed or made a trumpeting sound.

Immediately thereafter, Glamug ran to the temporary tents at one corner
of the ledge and got his weapons.  All of the hunters had slept there
last night, jammed against each other, keeping each other warm with
their body heat.  The night before a hunt for any of the large and
dangerous beasts, the hunters slept away from all women.  Nor were they
to be touched by the women until they returned from the hunt and went
through a ceremony to propitiate the ghosts of the slain beasts.  The
women went through a separate cleansing ceremony before they received
their mates in their tents.

The man who led the hunters to the plains was not the chief nor the
shaman nor the greatest hunter, Shivkaet.  He was a youth, Thrimk, who
had gone through the rites of passage only two years before.  Last
night he had dreamed that he had encountered a family of rhinos in a
narrow valley debouching onto the plain.  And in the dream he had skin
the male.  For this reason he was given the lead, and the hunters sang
about his prowess-to-be as they marched along.

When they reached the edge of the plain, they fell silent.  They formed
into three crescents with the greatest hunters in the first. Gribardsun
was put on the right-hand tip of the first crescent.  Von Billmann
stayed to one side of the group, shooting film.  He carried the express
rifle.  Drummond Silverstein was with the German, though he had
originally said that he had too much work to do to accompany them. But
he had changed his mind.

Fleetingly, Gribardsun wondered if Silverstein was hoping that his
rival (as he undoubtedly thought of him) would get killed.  He was the
only one who had not protested when Gribardsun said he was going to
hunt with only native arms.

Silverstein, however, could not win.  If Gribardsun was killed or hurt,
then Silverstein's guilt would punish him.  If Gribardsun performed
well, then Rachel would regard him even more highly, and Silverstein
would dislike him even more.

The youth, Thrimk, went straight to the pass giving onto the narrow
valley he had seen in his dream.  Of course, he must have seen it in
reality more than once.  Though the valley was six miles away from the
village, it was within the territory ranged by the Wota'shaimg.  The
tribesmen had not come here recently, however, for fear of encountering
the other people who had moved in.  The Wota'shaimg called these the
Wotagrub, the Bear Robbers.

The contacts of the two people had been few and brief after the
invasion of the Wotagrub's village.  The Wotagrub fled whenever they
met Wota'shaimg, even though the latter were outnumbered.  Once,
however, a lone youth Thrimk, in fact had almost been hit by a heavy
boomerang.  The weapon had come sailing from a pile of boulders on the
side of a hill.  Thrimk had foolishly tried to locate his assailant,
but the man was gone.

The head men had urged Gribardsun to clean out the Wotagrub, saying
that there was not enough game in the area to support their own people
for long, let alone an additional tribe.  Moreover, the Wotagrub had
not been punished enough for their theft.

Gribardsun had refused.  He had nothing against the so-called Wotagrub,
who had done only what their enemies would have done in their place.
Moreover, though he did not tell the Wota'shaimg so, he intended to
study the Wotagrub.  And he certainly could not get friendly with them
if he decimated them.

The hunters stopped when Thammash raised his hand with a spear held
straight up in it.  He nodded at Thrimk, who had also stopped.  The
youth shook his spear at them, smiled, and trotted off into the pass.
He was a tall fellow with light brown hair and a scraggly beard.  He
had not yet attained his full growth.  He was noted for his swift
running and his high spirits, alternating with fits of deep depression.
His father was Kaemgron, the best worker in stone and wood weapons in
the tribe.  But Thrimk and his father quarreled often.

The nucleus of the best hunters, with Kaemgron, who was supposed to
stay close to his son, and Gribardsun, trotted after Thrimk a minute
later.  Von Billmann climbed the side of the hill on one side of the
gap, and Silverstein climbed the other side to take pictures.

A narrow stream wandered out of the mouth of the valley.  Along its
sides were unusually heavy growths of vegetation, though none were over
six feet high.  Gribardsun saw the vegetation moving.  Occasionally
Thrimk's head would appear.  Then he saw the brown tip of a horn
plowing through the little trees.  He repressed a shout.  A moment
later he heard the sudden thudding of heavy feet and the thrashing of
little trees bending and breaking under the onslaught of a huge body.

Thrimk should have gone in far more cautiously, and he should have
tried to lure the behemoths out into the open.  But he must have been
overconfident because of his dream.  And he also probably wanted to
impress the tribesmen with his bravery.  Whatever his reasons, he had
made a fatal mistake.

Thrimk yelled, there was a very loud thud, and the youth's body went
sailing through the air while a tall horn followed it and then the
shorter horn appeared and then the head of the rhinoceros as the beast
completed the upward toss.

Both beast and man disappeared, but the vegetation waved and shook as
the beast turned and charged again.

The hunters were setting up loud cries by now.  They ran up to the edge
of the vegetation and poked their spears into it and shouted.
Gribardsun looked up at von Billmann.  Gribardsun was not wearing the
tiny communication set today.  Now he regretted not having permitted
himself any product of civilization.

The German, however, saw him and waved at him.  Then he gestured into
the valley and held up seven fingers.  Seven rhinos.

Presently the vegetation thrashed and bent and cracked again, and a
great woolly rhinoceros burst out.  He was larger than any the group
had yet seen, and his hide was covered with brownish, tightly coiled
hair like rather sparse sheep's wool.

He stopped after he broke the greenery, snuffed, and then trotted back
and forth, his head lifted high.

A female and her baby broke out of the woods and then another male and
female and a baby and a half-grown female.

The first beast had blood upon his horn and on his hoofs.

Kaemgron yelled and ran forward and then cast his spear.  It struck the
huge male on the shoulder, and the tip of reindeer antler penetrated
about two inches.  The atlatl had given the spear considerable force.

At that the rhino, which had not been able to make up its mind which
way to charge, or, indeed, to charge at all, started out for Kaemgron.
The earth shook as its heavy legs pounded, and its head was slung
low.

Kaemgron turned and ran.  Angrogrim threw his spear, and the missile
penetrated perhaps three inches into the right rear flank just forward
of the upper part of the leg.  But the rhino did not even seem aware of
the wound.

Other spears missed or, striking, bounced off harmlessly.

The men scattered.

The rhino did not allow itself to be distracted by all the yelling and
running figures.  It headed straight for Kaemgron and was going to
catch up with him within the next twenty or so yards.

The second male also charged.

Gribardsun ran in with a spear he had snatched from a man in flight,
and rammed it into the eye of the beast as it passed him by at three
feet.

The spear was torn out of his grasp, and he was whirled around
violently and thrown to the ground.

Von Billmann's express rifle boomed, and the second rhino stumbled,
recovered, and charged again, though not as vigorously.  Its goal was
Gribardsun, who was just getting to his feet.

The express boomed twice, the rhino collapsed, its legs folding under
it.  Blood ran out of three wounds on its left side and out of its
mouth.

The first behemoth was also dead.  Gribardsun's spear had driven into
its brain.

The remaining beasts had turned uncertainly and moved back into the
brake.  Von Billmann signaled that they were now moving rapidly up the
valley.  Gribardsun picked up one of the spears that had ricocheted off
the beast and went into the brake.  It did not take long to find what
remained of the unfortunate Thrimk.

Kaemgron pushed past Gribardsun and then wailed loudly.  He went around
the corpse three times widdershins, dragging his spear tip in the
earth, and then he returned to the body of the rhino that had killed
Thrimk. There he beat the animal over the head with the butt of his
spear, wailing and weeping all the time.  Then he walked three times
counter widdershins around the beast and cut off its tail with his
flint knife.  He gave the tail to Gribardsun, who stuck it in his belt.
Gribardsun recovered his spear, noting that the reindeer antler tip was
loose.

Kaemgron returned to his son's body to mourn.  Those who followed him
also began wailing.  But those who stayed to cut up the two carcasses
were jubilant.  They laughed and smeared blood over their foreheads and
lips and dipped their index fingers in the blood and spotted
Gribardsun's forehead with the blood.  After von Billmann came down off
the hillside, he was daubed with blood, too.

"That was very good shooting, Robert," Gribardsun said.

Tve practiced enough in the preserve," von Billmann said.  But you, you
were magnificent!  Right through the eye, and you had to crouch and
drive it upward, the rhino's head was so low!  If it had turned on
you..."

"But it didn't," the Englishman said.  "He had his heart set on
Kaemgron.  Though it is true that the beasts are very unpredictable and
he might have turned."

He did not seem to want to talk about his feat.  But he looked as if he
were bursting with happiness.

Drummond joined them.  He said, "I got some fine shots, but the people
back home aren't going to believe them."

Thammash approached Gribardsun.  "We have plenty of meat for a week or
so," he said.  "And the mourning for Thrimk must start soon.  But the
day is far from being over, and it would be well if we pushed on and
killed more.  What do you think?"

Though he had been treated with great politeness and respect from the
beginning, Gribardsun had not before been asked to decide any course of
action.  Apparently his spectacular feat had made him the equal, or
perhaps even the superior, of the chief.  He was now one of them in
some respects anyway.

Von Billmann had been daubed with the rhino blood, and he was treated
with great respect too.  But the tribesmen seemed to believe that he
was secondary to the Englishman, Perhaps they thought this because
Gribardsun, being the first one to use the rifle, was considered to be
the owner.  And he had loaned his thunder stick while he killed the
rhino with un magical weapons to show that he could use them as no one
else could.

Gribardsun considered and then said, "We should push on, I believe. Why
waste the day?"

The body of Thrimk was wrapped in a great bearskin and six men were
delegated to watch the body and to cut up the two behemoths.  Leaving
these behind weakened the party, but the hyenas, wolves, lions, and
bears had to be kept away.

The party set out again toward the edge of the plain where a herd of
mammoths was eating.  The great beasts did not pay them any attention
until the hunters were within fifty yards.  They were downwind, and the
mammoths, like the elephants of Gribardsun's time, were weak-eyed.  But
when they detected the mass of humans, they began moving away.  Several
big bulls, however, threatened them with short charges and much
trumpeting and tearing up of small trees.

The very long and fantastically curved tusks, the huge hump of fat on
top of the head, the long reddish-brown hairs, and the sheer size of
the beasts was very impressive.

The men spread out in a deep crescent formation.  While the center held
the attention of the bulls, the horns advanced very slowly.

One of the bulls broke and ran toward the herd.  The other two kept up
their bluffing charges until the center had gotten within fifty feet
and the horns of the crescent were past them.  Then the biggest bull
charged.

The plan was for the center to turn and flee, drawing the beast after
it.  The horns would close in and try to hamstring or spear the
beast.

The center was not imitating panic.  Its members were scared, and
rightly so.  The beast was over eleven feet high at the shoulder,
weighed possibly four tons, and was running faster than any man.

Only Gribardsun did not run.  He waited with his spear butt resting
against the notch of the atlatl.  When the beast was a shrilling gray
and reddish-brown wall with great curving ivory tusks and uplifted
trunk and big outspread ears and little red eyes, only thirty feet
away, he sped to one side.

The mammoth started to turn toward him, but it wasn't fast enough.
Gribardsun cast the spear from the atlatl, and half its length
disappeared into the beast's left front leg.

The animal went down with a crash that must have broken some of its
bones.  Trumpeting agonizedly, it struggled to get back onto its
feet.

The hunters ran in and lunged, driving their flint or
reindeer-antler-tipped spearheads into the stomach or under the tail.

But they ran away then, because the second bull had decided to charge
too.  It shook the earth, and it screamed through its uplifted
proboscis.

Gribardsun's spear had been snapped off when the beast fell on it.  He
had only a stone axe, which he took from his belt and threw.  But, it
might as well have been made of feathers.  It rotated through the air
and its head struck the animal in the open mouth.  It bounced out, and
now the mammoth was concentrating on him.

He turned and ran.  As he did so, he looked for von Billmann, who had
been on the left with the rifle.  He could see nothing of him and had
no time to speculate where he was.

Though Gribardsun was very fast, he was not as swift as the mammoth.
Its long legs covered the ground faster than his could, and suddenly
the trumpeting and thundering of the hoofs was close behind him.  With
a yell he leaped to one side, and the mammoth reared up and whirled
around with an unbelievable, and terrifying, swiftness.

Gribardsun ran forward and through the front legs of the startled
creature and then threw himself to one side.

The mammoth whirled around him, stopped, and reversed its horizontal
rotation on seeing the man rolling away.

Angrogrim, yelling, ran in past Gribardsun and hurled his spear into
the open mouth of the beast.  Its point disappeared into the pinkish
flesh.

Gribardsun leaped up and ran off with the mammoth again pursuing him.
Shivkaet launched a spear from his atlatl not ten feet from the beast,
and the shaft drove at least a foot into its side.

The mammoth, however, would not be turned aside.  It had its heart set
on trampling Gribardsun.

The Englishman looked to his right.  The tribesmen were running toward
them with the intention of hurling their spears at the beast.  Beyond,
Drummond was looking through the camera's viewfinder.  He was carrying
a 32-caliber rifle with explosive bullets, but he seemed intent only on
getting good pictures.

The yelling hunters swarmed in and the spears flew.  One scraped
Gribardsun's shoulder and another plunged into the ground and he had to
leap over it.

But a series of thuds told him that many had plunged into the mammoth.
He looked behind him; the beast had slowed down.  Half a dozen shafts
were sticking out from its sides, and one had entered a few inches into
its right front leg and lamed it.

Then the express rifle boomed out three times, and the beast, gouting
blood from great holes in its side, fell over.  The impact made the
earth quiver under Gribardsun's naked feet.

Drummond, his rifle still suspended on a strap over his shoulder,
walked up and circled the beast, his camera taking in all the
details.

Von Billmann, looked distressed, ran up to the Englishman.

"I'm sorry I didn't shoot sooner," he said.  "But I caught my heel on a
rock and fell on my head.  I was stunned for a minute or so."

He brushed the back of his head and showed Gribardsun the blood still
welling from the cut.

Silverstein did not comment.  The Englishman said, "I realize the
necessity of taking films.  But didn't you understand that I was in bad
trouble?"

Silverstein flushed and said, "No, I didn't.  By the time I realized
that von Billmann should be shooting, it was too late.  And then things
happened so fast that I froze.  But Robert did shoot then, and
everything seemed all right."

"In the future, the cameraman will have to be a backup for the
rifleman," Gribardsun said.  "An alert backup."  He turned away.  There
was nothing more to say.  Silverstein was an intelligent man and would
realize what Gribardsun could have said.  Gribardsun was not sure that
Silverstein had frozen because of panic.  He might have been hoping,
consciously or unconsciously, that the mammoth would trample
Gribardsun.

The Englishman waved away the tribesmen who wanted to smear his
forehead with the mammoth's blood.  He sterilized the cut on the
German's head and sprayed it with pseudoskin.  Then he accepted the
mammoth's tail and permitted the daubing.

The rest of the day was heavy work.  The beasts were cut up into pieces
small enough to haul.  The entire tribe, except for the sick and the
very old, of whom there were few, helped to carry the meat in.

While the work was going on, the vultures, ravens, wolves, and hyenas
gathered around.  Presently two cave lions appeared, scattered a pack
of hyenas, and occupied their spot.  They sat watching, occasionally
roaring but not offering to approach closer.  And then the hyenas
suddenly attacked the lions.

Gribardsun shouted at Drummond to take pictures.  This was too good to
miss.  There was nothing cowardly about these great beasts, and their
teamwork was worthy of wolves.  One would dash in and snap at a lion,
and when the lion whirled and leaped, another would run in behind him
and bite.  Every time a lion bounded after a fleeing hyena, he had to
quit chasing it because of painful bites on his tail or rear legs.

But a hyena was caught and killed by one of the lions as it tormented
the other.  Before it died, the hyena bit down once and the immensely
powerful jaws broke the lioness's right front leg.  The lioness closed
her jaws on the hyena's hindquarters and scooped out its entrails with
a huge paw.  But she was crippled thereafter, and her mate, a giant
possibly a third larger than the African lions of Gribardsun's time,
was hard put to it to defend her.  He was of a beautiful golden color
that reminded Gribardsun of a pet he had once had in Kenya.  He lacked
the mane of the African lion, however.

The people had stopped working on the mammoths when the uproar of the
battle broke out.  Thammash spoke to Gribardsun.

"Those lions may be the ones that killed Skrinq last year.  It would be
good if we made sure that the male is dead, too, and so revenge Skrinq.
And also make life a bit safer for us."

"I think the hyenas will do your work for you," Gribardsun

The lion had just wheeled on a tormentor, and as he did so, the two who
had been dancing just a few feet from him, ran in and seized a leg.
They gave one bite and spun and raced away.  The lion turned again, but
he fell on his side.  Though he got up immediately, it was evident that
he was hamstrung in one leg.  "After the lion is dead, kill the
hyenas," Thammash said.  "We have lost more people, especially
children, to the hyenas than to the lions."

"When I was a young man, I hated hyenas," Gribardsun said.  "They
seemed to me to be only cowardly stinking carrion eaters.  But I came
to know them better and to end up by admiring them.  They are not
cowardly, just intelligently cautious.  They hunt quite often and bring
down game.  And they have affection for their cubs and can, if caught
young and raised properly, be very intelligent and affectionate
pets."

The idea of raising any animal as a pet except for the bear cubs
boggled Thammash.  But that anybody could admire hyenas almost
staggered him.

The tormenting attacks lasted for about five minutes more.  Then the
lion was bowled over and he and about six hyenas became a rolling,
roaring, cachinnating, yelping mess.  Two hyenas were killed and one
was severely wounded.  But the lion was dead, his windpipe crushed
between a male's jaws.

The lioness was next, and she ripped the side off a hyena before she
died.  The survivors began eating at once, and the wolves and birds
moved in closer, waiting for their chance.  Thammash ordered some of
his men to follow him in an effort to drive off the hyenas.  He wanted
the two heads and the tails.  The rest the hyenas could have, since
there was already so much meat harvested.  The hyenas retreated
reluctantly but did not attack.  The heads and tails were hacked off
and brought back triumphantly.

"This has been a great day!"  Thammash cried.  "You have brought us
much good fortune, Koorik!"

Thammash did not think the fortune was so good when the people moved on
to the site of the dead rhinoceros.  He and the three strangers and
half of his tribe were moving across the plain to the rhinoceroses when
they saw three men racing toward them.  Thammash ran out to meet them.
Gribardsun followed.  He was in time to hear Shimkoobt, a man of about
forty, gasp out the end of his story.

While the six Wota'shaimg were cutting up one of the rhinos, they were
attacked by fourteen Wotagrub.  These sprang out from the heavy growth,
yelling and throwing spears and boomerangs.  Treekram had fallen with a
spear sticking out of his thigh.  The remaining five had thrown their
spears without effect.  The invaders had then thrown a second volley,
and Lramg'bud had been hit in the neck with a heavy boomerang.  The
Wotagrub had been charged, and the four had turned and fled.  But
another boomerang struck Kwakamg on a leg and he fell down.  Before he
could get up, he was speared.

The news was a great shock.  The loss of the meat was not so much,
since they had two mammoths at the other site.  But the loss of four
men in one day was a terrible blow to the Wota'shaimg.

The women, on hearing the news, started to wail.  Thammash told them to
keep quiet and get back to their work.  He detailed Angrogrim and
Shivkaet to follow him and set off.  Gribardsun and von Billmann went
with him; Silverstein stayed behind to guard.

Gribardsun had wondered for only a few seconds why the chief took only
two men with him against the invaders.  But then he saw that Thammash
expected Gribardsun and von Billmann to use their magical weapons
against the Wotagrub.  The Englishman was now carrying the express
rifle.  On seeing them at a distance of half a mile, however, the
Wotagrub ran off; but not without taking those parts of the rhinoceros
which the Wota'shaimg had already cut off.

All of the bodies, including Thrimk's, had been mutilated and the heads
removed.  Von Billmann took some films of these and then vomited.

Thammash stood silent for a long time.  Then he spoke to Gribardsun.

"Shouldn't we go after them and kill them?"

Gribardsun did not reply at once.  The deaths of the men had affected
him, since he was coming to know them as individuals and even becoming
fond of several.  Moreover, if the killings were unpunished, the
Wotagrub would try again.  And if the tribe lost many more men, it
would be in a critical situation.  '

However, he did not like to take on the powers of a god.  He would have
liked to stand to one side and study the relationships of the two
tribes.  Let them work out their own histories; if one perished, then
that was too bad.  But that was also the way things were.  And he also
hoped to be able to make friends with the Wotagrub and study them.  He
could not do so if he killed their men.

"Once you're involved, you have to take a stand," he told von Billmann
in English.  "If we take the lives of their enemies, we'll become one
of the Wota'shaimg.  Literally, because I'm sure they'll adopt us. That
is, if they have the custom of adoption."

He asked Thammash if the tribe ever made aliens members of their
people.

Thammash said, "I have never heard of such a thing."

Evidently these people were not as advanced as, say, the North American
Indian of pre-Columbian times.

"If you capture a baby," Gribardsun said, 'what do you do with him?
Kill him?"

Thammash's face brightened.  He said, "No, of course not, if he is
healthy.  We raise him to be a warrior and a hunter.  But that is
different.  A baby is not an enemy.  Nor even a Wota'shaimg."

A Wota'shaimg was a human being.  A non-Wota'shaimg was not fully
human.

"He becomes a Wota'shaimg when he goes through the initiation of
manhood," Thammash said.

Gribardsun knew that he could not turn down the request for help.  The
relationship between the explorers and the tribe would never be the
same again.  And there was the strong urging of his own feelings to
consider.  He was outraged, and even touched by grief, at the death and
the mutilation of his tribesmen.

His tribesmen!  he thought.

He said, "Very well.  We'll trail them."

And we'll see what happens then, he thought.

The four Gribardsun, Thammash, von Billmann, and Shivkaet set out. They
avoided ambush in the heavy growth by climbing above it on the
hillside.  Gribardsun thought it unlikely that the Wotagrub would dare
to try an ambush, but there was no sense taking chances.  They trotted
along swiftly but looked for tracks or other signs of the pursued. They
found a few that led toward the overhang under which the Wotagrub
lived.  Rather, it was the overhang under which they had lived.  When
they cautiously approached the site, they found the tents gone and cold
ashes in the hearths.

"They must have moved some time ago," Gribardsun said.

They cast about on all sides, including the hill above the overhang.
But the frequent spring rains tended to wash out footprints and to
carry off bits of fur caught on plants or dropped objects.

"Give me the 32 and its ammo," Gribardsun said to von Billmann.  "I'm
going after those fellows, and I don't want to be held back by slow
runners."

Von Billmann did as he was requested without protest.  Gribardsun told
the two tribesmen what he planned to do.  They protested that they
wanted to be in on the death.  The Englishman refused to allow them to
go with him.

"Your people need you," he said.  "Now.  Every hand available should be
carrying the meat and the tusks of the beasts."

"You are a very strong man," Thammash said.  "You could carry much
meat."

Gribardsun smiled and said, "True.  But it is more important that I
convince the Wotagrub that they should leave us alone."

Von Billmann said, "I can see the necessity of ensuring that our
subjects are protected so we can study them.  But you shouldn't go
alone."

"But I am," Gribardsun said.  He ran off down the hillside and was soon
lost to sight as he made his way back up the hill to the top.

The two tribesmen poked around the camp for anything of value the enemy
might have left behind.  And then the three departed.

Three

Rachel Silverstein was very disturbed by the account of the hunt,
Gribardsun's narrow escape, and the killings and mutilations.  But she
was most upset by the report of his lone expedition.

"Why did you let him go?"

Von Billmann shrugged and said, "I'm not strong enough to force him to
return.  Besides, he is the leader."

"But he's out alone in that savage wilderness!  Anything could happen
to him!  We might never see him again, not even know what happened!"

"That's true," von Billmann said.  "And he knows it.  But I'm not
worried.  Not much, anyway.  He can take care of himself.  If anybody
can, he can.  Would you like to see the films of the hunt?  You'll see
what I mean then."

Drummond Silverstein said, "Rachel, if I had gone, would you be as
concerned?"

Von Billmann, embarrassed, walked away.  He looked back a moment later
and saw them face to face, their skins flushed and their mouths
writhing.

The last of the carcasses was brought in after dusk.  Everybody except
the babies went to bed very late that night.  They cooked a great
quantity of the meat and ate with good appetite, despite the wails and
tears of the mourning women and children.  Some of these ate greedily
between fits of grief.  And racks of wood were prepared and meat placed
over them to be smoked.  The meat was scraped off the rhino skulls,
which were then broken open so that the brains could be cut out.  The
skulls were later placed in holes in the ground and filled with water.
Heated stones were dropped in, and the pieces of meat left on the
skulls were boiled free to make soup.  Rachel talked to some of the
widows.  Their lot was not to be a happy one, not that it had been
enviable when their mates were still alive.  They would become the
secondary wives of the most important men in the community, if they
were still of childbearing age.  They would be under the authority of
the first wives.  They and their children would always get what was
left over in the way of food or attention.  This would be more than
enough when times were good.  The tribe did not want widows and orphans
to suffer needlessly.  But when meat was scarce, the first wives and
their children would get first choice.

On the other hand, the high death rate among females of childbearing
age gave the secondary wives a chance to become first.  Life was hard
and insecure for everybody.

Four days went by.  The three fretted.  Rachel and Drummond hardly
spoke to each other until the morning of the fourth.  Then they became
civil and kissed each other good morning.  Apparently they had had some
form of reconciliation that night, though probably not until after some
verbal violence.

Von Billmann said, "Too much time has gone by.  I'm going out to look
for him tomorrow.  Would you two want to come along?"

"Of course we will," Rachel said.

"He should have taken along a radio," Drummond said.  "His idea of
going native was stupid.  He could at least have taken a radio and we'd
know where he was and if he was all right."

"It was stupid of us not to think of it," von Billmann said.  "But I
was too excited, and he just doesn't think about such things as keeping
people informed of his whereabouts.  He's a strange man, no doubt of
that.  There's something very peculiar about his being picked to go on
this expedition, you know.  Almost sinister, though I hate to say that
about Gribardsun."

"I would think so!"  Rachel said.  She made no attempt to hide her
anger.  "How can you say anything bad about him?  What's he done? Let's
hear it!"

"Your emotions are showing," Drummond said in a dull voice.

"Why shouldn't they?"  she said.  "Isn't it natural for me to get upset
if any one of us should be missing?  Isn't it right?"

"I'm sorry I said anything," he replied.

"What did you mean, almost sinister?"  Rachel said to von Billmann.
"And why is there anything strange about his being chosen?  He's
certainly qualified, isn't he?"

"I don't think there's any doubt about that now," von Billmann said.
"But when the expedition was first proposed, de Longnors was the
outstanding candidate as the leader.  He was a brilliant medical
doctor, both as diagnostician and researcher.  He also had written many
outstanding some of them classic works on physical anthropology, and he
had done brilliant work as an archeologist and botanist.  He was just
the type of man needed, one who could carry out superb research in a
number of fields."

"I had heard that he was considered," Drummond said.  "But I thought
that he was finally rejected because he was too hard to get along
with."

"That did go against him, but nobody else had his brilliance.  John
Gribardsun was one of the other candidates considered.  He had the same
versatile background as de Longnors but he had not been famous in any
of them.  He had published very little, and his medical practice was
limited to taking care of the natives on the Inner Kenyan Sanctuary,
where he lived so many years.  But then the name of Gribardsun was
heard more and more often in the news media and the guests shows.  And
he appeared on various guest panels, you know, and charmed his
audience."

"Hypnotized them, you mean," Drummond said.

"In a way perhaps; he does have some curiously magnetic quality," von
Billmann said.  "Anyway," he went on, 'we people interested in the
project, in the know about the scene behind the curtains, you might
say, soon found out that he was being considered as de Longnors'
backup.  There were other men even more qualified who had been
bypassed."

"How do you know they were more qualified?"  Rachel said.

"The project executives thought so," von Billmann said.  "At first,
anyway.  I was told that the test ratings indicated Gribardsun was
about sixth on the list.  But, suddenly, he was second.  There was a
good deal of talk about that.  Some people thought Gribardsun must have
found out something about some of the top executives, or some of the
politicians connected with the project, and was blackmailing them."

"That's a terrible thing to say!"  Rachel said.  "How could anybody
believe it?"

"You know how people are," von Billmann said.  "You'll have to admit
that it was mysterious.  It's still mysterious.  Though there's no
doubt in my mind that the right man was chosen.  The question is, were
the right methods used to pick him?  Or, rather, did he use the proper
channels and procedures to get chosen?"

"Did he?"  Rachel said.

Von Billmann shrugged and said, "I do not know.  It was all so odd and
so sudden.  De Longnors disappears..."

"We knew about that, of course," Drummond said.

"And after a while the executives announce that John Gribardsun has
been chosen to take his place.  Then, a week later, de Longnors is
found wandering on the seventh level of Center Paris.  He is incoherent
and suffering from amnesia.  He recovers somewhat in that he remembers
everything except the period of his disappearance.  That is a blank. By
then, the vessel was scheduled for launch.  De Longnors had missed too
much of the necessary training.  Besides, he might be mentally
unstable.  So he was left behind."

Rachel was 'furious but controlling herself.  She said, "Are you
hinting that John might have had something to do with de Longnors'
disappearance and his amnesia?  That he was abducted and drugged?"

"No, I'm not hinting that John had anything to do with it.  As you must
know by now, I have nothing but the greatest admiration for John
Gribardsun.  I'm glad that he, and not de Longnors, was picked.  All
I'm saying is that something strange was going on at the time.  And
that, a year before the vessel was launched, John Gribardsun had little
chance of being on it.

"It's a tremendously important thing to be chosen as one of the crew of
the H. G. Wells," von Billmann continued.  "This is a unique voyage.
There will be other trips into time, but none this far back again.  We
are indeed fortunate.  I've thanked whatever gods there are that I was
one of the four chosen out of thousands who qualified.  And that brings
up another thing.  John once told me that he started training for this
trip over twenty years ago, when it was first proposed that the theory
of time travel might be made a reality.  He was already a cultural
anthropologist; he had a Ph.D."  though he had never taught.  So he
figured out what type of man would be needed on an expedition into the
past, and he became an M.D."  and then got a doctor's degree in
archeology and botany and several master's degrees in related fields.

"Now, a man that determined to get a berth on the time ship, one who
sets out twenty years before it is established that there will be a
ship that man isn't going to let a kidnapping and a drugging get in his
way."

"You make me furious!"  Rachel said.  "First you tell us all these
sinister bits of information.  Then you say they're just guesses, and
you worship Gribardsun, and then..."

"I admire and respect him very much.  I didn't say anything about
worshipping him.  You must understand.  I don't want to think any ill
of John.  I like him too much for that.  But I am a scientist, and I
have to consider certain theories.  Especially when certain facts start
to build up a certain picture.  But nothing is proved anyway.  Or
probably ever will be."

"Well, I wouldn't blame him if he had played a dirty trick on de
Longnors," Drummond said.

Rachel looked surprised.  Her husband said, "Nor would I have blamed de
Longnors if Gribardsun had been in his place and he was the one who did
the abducting and drugging.  The crew of the H. G. Wells I will be
famous forever."

"I think that it won't be good to have this kept among us three," von
Billmann said.  "We should bring it out in the open; talk it over with
Gribardsun.  I don't want you to think I'm talking behind his back. Nor
would I want him to think that.  So why don't we tell him about this
conversation?"

"That would at least be honest," Rachel said.

"But not womanly," Drummond said.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Just a thought," Drummond said.  "It doesn't apply to you, of course,
since you're so outspoken."

"I don't know," she said.  "Perhaps we should reconsider.  If he felt
that we suspected him of underhandedness of, in fact, criminal behavior
wouldn't that make things difficult?  It's bad enough as it is, being
forced into intimate contact for four years, never seeing any other
human beings.  Real human beings, I mean," she said, as von Billmann
opened his mouth to protest.

Drummond laughed.

"You know what I mean!"  she said.  "Civilized men, then!  People who
think as we do!  But, really, what good will it do?  You don't expect
him to admit anything dishonest, do you?  And what if he did?  Or
didn't, for that matter?  What then?  What good would it do?  I've
changed my mind.  I think we ought to keep such suspicions to
ourselves."

"I don't," von Billmann said.  "John isn't the kind who likes festering
secrets.  He'd rather bring them out in the open."

"I think it should be discussed," Drummond said, looking strangely at
Rachel.

The funeral rites took most of one day.  The dead men were placed side
by side in a single shallow grave.  They were placed on their right
sides, knees drawn up against their bellies and arms down their sides,
the fingers touching the ankles.  They were clad in full skin suits,
their necks hung with chains of perforated stones and pierced bear
teeth and claws.  Their stones and wooden weapons were placed beside
them and pieces of mammoth and rhino meat were placed near the mouths.
The bodies were then covered with bearskins and more bear teeth strewn
over the skins.  Dirt was piled over the skins while the widows and
their children, along with Thrimk's parents, circled the grave
widdershins.  They wailed and wept and beat their breasts with their
fists and sometimes called on Wota'aimgkrimq, the Great She-Bear.
Later, Rachel would ask them what they thought about the afterlife. But
they, like the civilized and savage people of the time-travelers own
period, had only a vague and often contradictory concept of what
happened after they died.

The adult men and women then piled rocks on top of the dirt until there
was enough to discourage bears and hyenas from digging them up.  Glamug
danced around shaking a baton and chanting from behind his bear mask.
When the last rock was piled on, the tribe walked slowly back to the
shelf under the overhang.  And there they had a big feast.

The scientists stood around at a respectful distance and filmed the
entire ceremony.

On the way home that evening, Rachel said, "I wonder what happened to
that burial site?  I know that very spot was dug up sometime in 1980,
and nothing was found there."

Drummond shrugged and said, "I suppose very few graves survived.  They
were dug up eventually by animals or washed away.  And many must have
been removed during the building of houses and other constructions in
the early days when people didn't pay much attention to such things.
And, of course, there must be thousands of burial sites which just
haven't been discovered yet because there was no apparent reason to
dig.  In any case nothing but the stone implements and beads would
remain."

"When we get back, I'm going to look this spot over," Rachel said.
"There might be something they overlooked, even if it's only a
fossilized bear tooth or a flint spear head."

"A lot can happen in 14,000 years," he said.

Two more days passed.  Rachel fretted until she got on Drummond's
nerves.  He told her to quit worrying, or at least keep it to herself.
And he added that he doubted that she would worry as much if he were
gone that long.  This led to another quarrel, which they tried,
unsuccessfully, to keep from von Billmann, who guessed its origin
correctly.  He said nothing to either of them; he did not care to get
involved, especially in an affair which he disapproved of.  They were
scientists and so should have left their less worthy emotions behind
them in A.D. 2070.  He could understand why Rachel had fallen for
Gribardsun, since he did in fact, despite his earlier protestation to
her, come as close to worshipping the man as he would allow himself to.
But she should repress her feelings and not permit them to interfere
with their work.

He did not tell them this, of course.  But they knew him well; they
could almost read his thoughts.

On the fifth day, John Gribardsun walked into camp.  With him he
brought two strangers.  At a distance, his colleagues would have had
trouble recognizing him if he had not still been clean-shaven.

His two companions were almost as tall as Gribardsun and fully as
broad-shouldered.  One had reddish hair and the other yellow-brown.
Their eyes were blue.  Their bones were large, and their supraorbital
ridges were prominent.  Though they were Caucasian, they had slight
epicanthic folds, indicating, perhaps, some Mongolian genes.

Gribardsun strode into camp as if he owned it which, in a sense, he
did.  The strangers hung back until he turned and gestured for them to
join him.  They put their spears and atlatls and boomerangs on the
ground and climbed up to the ledge.  Their wooden-handled flint knives
were still in their sheaths, however.

Gribardsun introduced them as Klhmnhach and Rhtinkhlhk.  They smiled
nervously and spoke in a strange whispering speech.

Von Billmann, hearing them, smiled so broadly that his face threatened
to split.  Gribardsun laughed and said, "Their language is a linguist's
delight, Robert.  Very few vowels and most of the consonants are
unvoiced.  And nothing like anything ever recorded in Europe."

The Bear People did not like the strangers at all.  Thammash protested
loudly while he made threatening gestures at the two.  They moved
closer together, but their faces remained expressionless and their
fingers were widespread.

There was a brief interruption when Laminak, Dubhab's pre-teenaged
daughter, ran to Gribardsun and threw her arms around his waist and
hugged him while she wept.  The Englishman patted her head and murmured
something about being happy to see her again.  Then he gently pushed
her away, and her mother took her hand and led her away while she
scolded her.

"You've made another conquest," Rachel said.  Her smile was hard.

Gribardsun did not reply.  He addressed the entire tribe, telling them
that he had made peace with the strangers, the Wotagrub, whose name for
themselves was Krhshmhnhik.  This meant The People.  The tribesmen were
unable to pronounce the word anywhere near correctly, nor would they
make much of an effort.  For them, the Krhshmhnhik remained the
Wotagrub.

Gribardsun did not say how he had talked the Wotagrub into making
peace.  Nor did he say anything about taking revenge for their having
killed so many Wota'shaimg.  From now on there would be peace.  The
Wotagrub would move even farther away.  The borders of the two tribes
would be such and such, and he defined them as exactly as he could,
using landmarks both tribes knew well.  If one tribesman ventured into
the territory of the other tribe, he must refrain from hunting there.

The Wota'shaimg did not like anything he said.  They wanted an eye for
an eye.  In fact, two eyes for an eye.  And they could not understand
why such a powerful magician and warrior as Gribardsun did not exact
vengeance.

The Englishman explained that he could have wiped out the whole tribe
easily.  But he saw no reason to do so.  That was that.

He later told his colleagues that it would have done no good to have
gone into ethics or morality.  The Wota'shaimg would not have
understood his modern philosophy.  The best thing to do was to issue an
edict as if he were a god.  They could understand that.  If they did
not understand rationality, they understood power.  The great magician
and wicked warrior to them, wicked was a compliment required such and
such or would punish them.  So they would do as he said, even if they
did not like it.

Gribardsun ordered a feast, and the two strangers squatted with the
elders of the tribe and the scientists and ate with them.  After that,
they relaxed.  The Wota'shaimg were not likely to murder them if they
ate with them.  The sharing of food implied safety for those who
shared.  There was no spoken law to this effect.  It was just
understood.

The time travelers examined the boomerangs of the strangers.  These
were carved with flint and consisted of a heavy close-grained wood
which they could not identify as yet.  The wood did not grow in this
area.  Gribardsun said he could speak only a few words word-sentences,
rather of the strangers.  But through sign language he had learned that
their origin was far to the south, and that they had brought these
boomerangs from their native territory.  That was probably either in
southern Iberia or possibly North Africa.  The two would be connected
with a land bridge, of course, since the Mediterranean Sea was much
smaller and lower now.  The Wotagrub had once had many boomerangs, but
they had been in this country so long that they had lost most of them.
And there was no wood appropriate for making new ones.

"I believe that a trip southward, say about the time fall is due, would
be consistent with our purpose," Gribardsun said.  He chewed on a piece
of rare-cooked ibex steak for a moment and then said, "We could travel
swiftly to get away from the effects of winter here.  Winter farther
south won't be so severe that we can't travel.  And I think we should
take a look at the land bridge and at North Africa."

"Isn't that rather dangerous, putting ourselves so far away from our
vessel?"  Drummond said.  "I admit the scientific desirability of
studying the southern area.  But we must weigh the possible results
against the chances of killing ourselves off and so ruining the entire
expedition.  After all, the power spent on getting us here and back,
the fact that this is absolutely the only chance we'll get for a
personal look into the Magdalenian period well, I don't think we should
get too far away from our base of operations.  Here we have the
situation well in hand.  But if we wander around, just four of us,
we're subject to attack, to accident, to many things.  We might be cut
off.  We might..."

"Anything that could happen south could happen here," Gribardsun said.
"Let's think about it.  We have a month before autumn comes.  We'll
consider the feasibility of austral explorations then."

"Meanwhile," von Billmann said, "I'd like to record the language of the
Wotagrub.  Do you think it would be all right if I returned with these
two?"

"Why not?"  Gribardsun said.  "But I'd like you to collect some animal
specimens, too, including entomological specimens, if you could.  And
get samples of the blood of the Wotagrub if you can.  Don't push too
hard at first about that, though."

The German was delighted.  He stood up and said, I'll get my tent and
recorder and other equipment and leave as soon as possible."

"Sometime tomorrow," Gribardsun said, smiling.  "We have some things to
thresh out, a policy to determine regarding the Wotagrub.  It's
necessary that everybody understand exactly where we stand.  And that
won't be easy, since we have to communicate with the Wotagrub through
signs."

It was late when the fires were allowed to dim and the time travelers,
the elders, and the two strangers went to bed.  But Gribardsun was
satisfied that everybody understood, in general, what the relationship
of the two tribes was to be.

The following afternoon, von Billmann, carrying a large pack on the dur
aluminum rack on his back, walked off with the two strangers.  They
also carried packs, the German's equipment and supplies.  Von Billmann
was exhilarated, and he joked with his two companions.  They could not
understand a word he said, of course, but they understood his joy, and
they smiled back at him.

Rachel, watching him march off between them, said, "Do you really think
that it's wise to let him go off alone, John?"

He did not answer.  He had a habit, annoying to her, of not answering
questions if he thought they didn't deserve an answer.

Rachel bit her lip and looked at Drummond.  He shrugged and moved away.
He knew that she wanted him to give her moral support when she
questioned Gribardsun about his past.  But von Billmann had left them
so suddenly that they felt weakened.  It had been easy to talk about
the questions they would ask Gribardsun when he returned.  But now that
he was here, he seemed formidable.  He would doubtless resent their
questions and refuse to answer them.  And even if he did, then what?
The fact was, they were all here together and they must all work
together.  In any case, Rachel did not credit a word of their absurd
suspicions that Gribardsun had somehow got on the expedition through
foul play.

Drummond had asked her how she knew.  Did she really know the
Englishman that well?

Rachel had admitted that she did not, certainly not in any sense that
Drummond may have implied.  But her feminine intuition, her
perceptivity, irrational perhaps but nevertheless valid, told her that
Gribardsun was not a felon or a maniac.  She knew he was a decent human
being, just as a moth knows that certain flying objects are not bats.
But her antennae were invisible.

Drummond had laughed at that and asked her how in the world she had
ever gotten her doctorate in zoology.  Angrily, she had replied that
perhaps he was right about her intuitions.  They had told her that
Drummond was a strong man, a good husband, and that he was in love with
her.  But she had been mistaken.  So perhaps her intuitions about
Gribardsun were also wrong.

Drummond had then become angry in turn, and they had quarreled again.

Four

The summer passed swiftly, the short autumn of the glacial age was upon
them.  Gribardsun had by then apparently given up the idea, at least
temporarily, of traveling to the south.  There was so much to be done
in this little area that it would have seemed shirking their duties to
travel elsewhere.

Gribardsun's study of the Wota'shaimg language had so far revealed a
vocabulary of more 'words' than he would have expected.  He was
convinced that there were at least that many more.  Although it was a
poor language for communicating intellectual ideas, it was surprisingly
versatile in words for emotions, sensations, and impressions.  And, it
had a highly technical language for those things most important to the
Wota'shaimg: hunting, fishing, various types of animals and stones,
shades of light, kinds of snow and ice.

Their numeral system went up to twenty, and past that they used the
word for 'many."  But they could describe exactly each member of a
group exceeding the number of twenty, some of them being able to list
with all necessary distinguishing features each bison of a herd of
forty.

They all had a phenomenal ability for reciting long tales and certain
common magical formulae.  Wazwim, the singer, could chant four thousand
lines of a poem without prompting.  He did this three times over a
period of two months for Gribardsun, and his lines seldom varied.
However, whenever he thought of an improvement, he would promptly make
it then and there.

The chant was only roughly a poem.  The feet were based on quantity,
though far removed from the classical Latin or Greek quantity.  The
line was roughly composed of a sort of trochaic hexameter.  There was
no rhyme but much alliteration.  Nor could the poem be called an epic
in the true sense of the word.  It was a loose collection of narratives
of heroes and totem animals and evil spirits intermixed with magical
formulae and folk wisdom.  The closest parallel to the 'epics' that
modern man knew was the Finnish Kalevala.  Everything had taken place
long long ago, starting, in fact, before the creation of the universe
and continuing up until a dozen generations ago, when the last of the
heroes had died.  Men today were only ordinary men, according to the
song, weaklings and poor-spirited.  They didn't make men like they did
in the old days.

Gribardsun was surprised that such a small, technologically retarded
society could have produced such a relatively sophisticated poem; and
with, for all its serviceable flexibility, a nonetheless essentially
primitive vocabulary.  Its existence in such a society went against
all, that he knew and had been taught.  He said as much.

"That's the frustrating thing about the limitations of time travel,"
Drummond said.  "We can't go even farther back to check out the origin
and the development of the so-called epic.  Or of anything."

Gribardsun nodded, but he did not seem too unhappy about it.  It was
obvious that he was, in fact, very happy.  He went out hunting with the
others, or sometimes alone, and he always came back with meat.  He
seldom used his modern weapons but confined himself to using the tribal
ones.  He broke his own rule only when a big animal charged and made it
necessary to use a rifle.  Or when he went bird hunting.  There were
enormous flocks of ducks and geese settled around the lakes, and he
went out happily dawn after dawn to hunt these.  At first he killed
them with a small spear or stones from a sling, or trapped them.  But
he occasionally took a shotgun and brought down dozens in one day.

"This is a paradise!"  he said one evening to the Silversteins.  "A
world such as it should be!  Damned few humans, and an abundance of
wild life!  And yet this place is barren compared to what Africa must
be!  We must go down there when spring comes!"

Drummond sometimes felt like remonstrating with Gribardsun.  He thought
that the Englishman spent too much time hunting when he should have
been doing his scientific work.  But Rachel said that he was learning
the inner intimate life of the tribe by participating in their
activities not just by observations.  Moreover, could Drummond
truthfully say that Gribardsun had neglected any of his scientific
work?

Every second day, von Billmann reported via their tiny transceivers. By
the time the first snows came, he had recorded and noted enough of the
language to keep him busy for years.  He had also succeeded in gaining
some fluency in the strange whispering speech.

"I'll be coming tomorrow," he said.  "Leaving here, that is.  They're
giving a big shindig for me tonight.  We'll be eating mammoth and bison
and horse meat, lots of duck, and plenty of berries and greens.  And
that fermented berry and fruit juice I told you about.  It tastes like
hell, but it sure packs a punch."

That was another unexpected discovery.  It had not been suspected that
alcohol had been made so early.  But the knowledge of alcohol was
apparently not extensive as yet.  The Wota'shaimg, for instance, knew
nothing of it.

The main reason that von Billmann was returning, aside from his longing
for civilized companionship, was that the Wotagrub were moving out.

This was another discovery that went against the supposed facts.  It
had been assumed that they roamed during the warm seasons and holed up
in caves or under overhangs during the winter.  The arctic winters of
middle Europe were surely too harsh to permit much movement by
humans.

But the Eskimos traveled over the arctic ice and lived off it during
the winter.  They were integrated with their environment.  They had all
the technology needed to enable them to cope with it.  And so had the
Magdalenians.

Sometimes, the tribes did hole up in one place all winter, if there was
enough game in the area to support them.  But when the game became
scarce, the tribe packed its tents and belongings and went wherever the
herds went.  The game was getting scarce around here, partly because of
the strangers' magical weapons.  Everybody had eaten very well indeed,
and fewer babies had died.  But the big animals, the mammoths and the
rhinos, had been scared out.  They were becoming scarcer every year,
anyway.  The bison and the horses had moved on to some other area.  The
ibex were scarce for some reason.  Even the great predators, the cave
bear and the cave lion, had been killed or decided that the area was
unsafe for them.  And the reindeer had cropped up all the lichen and
fungi and moved on.

Gribardsun solved the conflicting problems of remaining with the tribe
to study them intensively and of exploring the land to the south.

Knowing that the tribesmen talked much among themselves of their
dreams, and that they depended much on Glamug to interpret their dreams
for them, Gribardsun planted the idea of going south.  He described how
much easier life would be where the snows weren't so deep, and soon
some people did dream of traveling far south.  They discussed these
dreams among themselves and then went to Glamug with them.

Several had dreamed that Gribardsun led them south.  Since the dreams
were obviously wishes, and since they felt protected and provided for
under Gribardsun, they wished him to conduct them into the paradise.

Glamug came to the Englishman and told him of what his people had
dreamed.  Gribardsun agreed with Glamug's analysis.  Yes, he would be
happy to guide them into the unknown lands to the south.  They should
start as soon as the long gray vessel was hauled up to the top of the
hill and secured.

The ground was frozen, and a thin coat of ice had covered it after a
partial snow.  Even though they had gotten over most of their awe of
the travelers themselves though they retained all the original respect
they had never approached the vessel.  Now, under Gribardsun's urgings,
they poled over the vessel until they had it on wooden and bone sleds.
Ivory and bone wedges were driven into the slots on top of the sleds to
keep the vessel from rolling off.

Meanwhile, other workers had chopped with reindeer antler picks through
the ice and into the frozen earth.  Stakes were driven into the holes.
The long rawhide ropes were attached to the sleds and the other ends
run several times around the stakes.  The tribe, digging in their boots
into the chopped-out steps along the slide, heaved on the ropes.  The
sleds and their three-hundred-ton burden moved slowly} oh, so slowly,
upward.

It took until past dusk to get the H. G. Wells I over the crest of the
steep hill.  The work was carried on by burning pine torches and by
lights set up by the travelers.  The air was cold; the breaths steamed;
and their sweat froze on their faces and on their beards.  But they had
eaten well, and Rachel had made gallons of hot cocoa, which the tribe
tasted for the first time and could not get enough of.  Gribardsun kept
up a stream of jokes and worked alongside them, pitting himself against
Angrogrim, who tried to show that he was not only as big as a horse but
as strong as one.

By ten o'clock that night, without the death or injury of a single
person, they had restored the vessel to its original position.  Large
boulders were rolled alongside to keep it from moving in any
direction.

"There's nothing to keep some wandering tribe from rolling it down
again if they want to go to the trouble," Gribardsun said.  "But I
doubt that anybody will touch it.  It's too frighteningly alien for
these people."

The following morning was bright and clear, though cold.  The tribe
packed their tents and other artifacts and piled them on travois-like
poles.  These had broad ends, somewhat like skis, which slid over the
snow without sinking much.  The women and the juvenile males pulled the
travois while the men spread out ahead, behind, and on the flanks as
guards.  They all sang the Going-Away Song, taking farewell of the
place which had protected them for three seasons and to which they
would return if they were fortunate.

They also sang the Song of Shimg'gaimq, a legendary hero who had led
the tribe from the far south in the far past.  At the end of the song
they substituted Gribardsun's name for Shimg'gaimq; the implication was
that he was a new hero and even greater than the old.

The trek southward was slow.  Heavy snows began to fall, and there were
days when they could do nothing but hole up.  Rachel and Drummond
tended to stay huddled up inside their foam hut, which had been
transported on skis.  Gribardsun and von Billmann went out with the
hunters, and they used their rifles.  To have restricted themselves to
native weapons might have meant that the tribe would starve, or at
least go very hungry for some time.  The game just seemed to have
disappeared.  Yet they knew that the deep snows hid plenty of bison and
reindeer.  The behemoth mammoths and rhinoceroses should also be
somewhere around, penned in by high walls of snow.  If they could be
located, they could be speared with little chance of their escaping.

Gribardsun finally located a 'yard' which held a herd of thirty bison.
He shot three males, and they butchered them while the other bulls
pawed the snow-streaked grasses and snorted and made rumbling noises.
But none charged, and presently the carcasses of the bulls were hauled
away in many pieces.  Then the big gray wolves appeared and devoured
what the men had left behind.  The last Gribardsun saw of them, they
were slinking toward the herd.  He doubted that they would dare attack
in the 'yard' where the bulls had freedom of movement and the wolves
could not get away swiftly.

The tribe ate for three days and then set out again.  They continued
through the deep snows, with frequent rest stops, until they came to
the foothills of the Pyrenees.  The passes of the range were blocked
with snow and ice.  The tribe could either camp until after the spring
thaws and much of the snow never melted even in the summer or go around
the mountains by way of the sea.

Here Gribardsun met his first serious resistance from the Wota'shaimg.
They knew nothing of boats; they did not even know how to swim.  When
they learned what was expected of them, they refused.  They would not
set out on the ghastly gray seas even if they could stay close to the
shore.  The very idea paralyzed them with terror.

The travelers built a boat by hollowing out a log.  (This far south
there were some trees large enough to provide adequate trunks for
dugouts.) The four worked energetically for three days, and on the
fourth they launched the craft in the heavy-rolling bitterly cold surf
of what would some day be called the Bay of Biscay.  They paddled
around for an hour to demonstrate to the tribe what could be done with
a boat.  Then they returned to the beach to still unconvinced
observers.  And that was all the people wanted to be: observers.
Participation was unthinkable for them, or so they claimed.

There were only two exceptions.  Angrogrim volunteered to accompany
them, since he felt that his reputation for courage must be upheld. The
other was Laminak, who said she would go wherever Gribardsun went.

The Englishman seized on this chance to hold up the others to scorn.
Were they fearful to go where a twelve-year-old girl dared to go?  Were
the men of the Wota'shaimg really less brave than a girl-child?

Gribardsun pressed this line and finally said that he would make up a
song about the cowardly warriors of the Bear People if they did not
show some guts very quickly.  And so the men, and then the women,
reluctantly agreed to build boats and set out along the coast.  But it
was two weeks before the people were able to handle the craft well
enough, and several times a boat was capsized and the paddlers dumped.
Three caught pneumonia but were brought quickly back to health with
Gribardsun's medicine.  Every person wore an inflatable preserver
around their waist.  These had been brought from the time-vessel
stores.  There were so many in the stores because Gribardsun thought
they might come in handy if supplies and specimens were to be hauled by
boat at any time.  The floaters could support large heavy containers if
they should chance to get dumped into the water.  In the meantime some
were used as stabilizers on the primitive craft.

The fleet of ten large dugouts left the shores of what would some day
be Gaul, and then France, and the boats, staying close to the shore,
crept around the northern edge of the Iberian Peninsula.  Near what
would be the site of Lisbon, the boats put in for the last time and
were dragged inshore and hidden.  The Bear People were much relieved;
at no time had they become fond of sea life, and they hoped never to
have to endure it again.

Gribardsun led them across the peninsula, angling southeastward most of
the time.  They crossed great plains and went through heavy forests.
Here the animal life was somewhat different; red deer and wild pigs
were numerous, and there were many shaggy forest horses.  But there
were also great brown mountains of bison and woolly rhinos and
mammoths, though these were not as numerous as on the other side of the
Pyrenees.  Conditions were changing, and within a thousand years or
perhaps even less, the behemoths would be extinct in Iberia.  The
forest elephant was replacing them.  The cave bear and lion and hyena
were numerous enough to require caution in hunting.  And the tribesmen
of Iberia were as hostile as their northern kinsmen.  These, however,
were easily dispersed with a few shots fired into the air or, if they
persisted, were routed with a few hypodermic missiles containing a
drug.  The missiles were not harmless; they struck with considerable
impact and left great painful bruises and sometimes broke ribs or arms.
But they did not kill except once, when a hostile warrior, allergic to
the drug, died in a seizure a few minutes after being shot.

Gribardsun dissected the corpse thoroughly, taking photographs of every
organ, analyzing the blood and other tissues and studying the genetic
structure.  In the meantime, von Billmann recorded the speech of three
prisoners.  By the time they were released, they had supplied him with
a basic grammar and about six thousand vocabulary items.  One of the
prisoners, however, died a few hours before his fellows were given
their freedom.  He seemed to have nothing outwardly wrong with him; he
just gave up the ghost and died.  Gribardsun thought that the death was
the result of an alarm syndrome.  His dissection confirmed his
diagnosis.  The man had gone into a shock from which he could not
recover.  He had been terrified from the time he woke up to find
himself in the hands of alien peoples.  And he had, unfortunately, seen
Gribardsun carry off parts of the first dissection into the woods where
he left them for the wolves to eat.  He expected a similar fate, no
doubt.

Von Billmann, however, was rejoicing.  He was sure that his prisoners
spoke a language which just might be the ancestor, or collateral
ancestor, of Basque speech.  It would be impossible to confirm it until
the scientists made an extensive study after the vessel returned.  In
addition, of course, the evidence collected by the next expedition,
planned for 8000 B.C."  would have to be compared with von Billmann's.
The glottochronology of a language over many thousands of years would
show a considerable change.  In fact, the stages of most languages
separated by three thousand years would look like two entirely
unrelated tongues to the layman and, indeed, to all but the most astute
linguists.  There were some tongues that resisted change more than
others, such as Lithuanian and Russian; the stages of these did not
show nearly as much mutation as, say, that between vulgar Latin and
modern French.

But 12,000 years changed any language so much that the untutored would
doubt that there was any relationship among the various branches which
had evolved from it.  Thus, the non linguist finds it difficult to
believe that English, Russian, and Hindustani sprang from the same
parent tongue.  And the parent was only 3,500 years old.  How much more
degeneration in 12,000 years?

"The theory, which is entirely unbacked by evidence, is that the Basque
tongues of our day are the last descendants of a vast superfamily which
once existed all over Europe and perhaps in North Africa and parts of
Asia," Robert said.  "But the rise of Indo-Hittite speakers swept away
most of the Ur-Basque speakers.  A small group, or small groups, of
Indo-Hittites in the area near the Elbe River expanded.  And through
conquest and absorption imposed their dialects on other areas.  And
these changed, in time, to become the parents of the Germanic, Slavic,
Baltic, Italic, Hellenic, Hittite, Tocharian, Armenian, and Indic
tongues, and God knows what others that history does not record.  That
is why I am so eager to go to that area and determine if I can find
languages which could be pre-Indo-Hittite.  Then the expedition in 8000
B.C. can get later specimens.  Then we can establish some sort of
glottochronology!"

Von Billmann paced back and forth while his whole being glowed.  His
love for ancient languages was far more passionate, and enduring than
any he could have had for a woman.  Or so it seemed to Rachel who,
however, was given to exaggeration.  Von Billmann admitted that there
were probably just as many tribes in France, and perhaps in any section
of Europe, which used the pre-Basque languages, as there were in
Iberia.  But since one had been found here or at least one had been
found which might be pre-Basque then it was likely that there were
others in this area.  Therefore, more speakers should be captured.

There was an ethical point to consider in his proposal.  It was one
thing to drug and capture men who attacked.  But did the scientists
have the right to track down human beings and imprison them even if it
was only for a while?  And for the sake of science, of course?

Gribardsun said that they had only four years here, and that their time
was so limited that they could make only a spot check here and there.
They could not resolve the existence of widespread pre-Basque speech if
they were overly scrupulous about the aborigines' rights  He meant to
get specimens.  After all, they would be treated well, and he would
load them down with meat when he released them.

Rachel objected.  She said that one man had died of shock just from
being imprisoned.  It was likely that what had happened once would
happen again.

"That was only because I wasn't prepared for such an event," the
Englishman said.  "I have the drugs to counteract shock, and at the
first symptom of an alarm syndrome, I'll use the drugs."

Rachel did not like it, but she gave in.  Drummond said that these
people would all be dead in a short time anyway, and that the benefits
to science overrode any small inconvenience the aborigines might
have.

"Would you say that if some time traveler from A.D. 3000 put you in a
cage for scientific study?"  Rachel said.

"Sure I would.  I might not like the practice, but I would never refute
the theory."

Gribardsun, von Billmann, Angrogrim, and Dubhab went hunting for
'specimens."  They found a young woman and her two children carrying
firewood.  Gribardsun hesitated; he did not want to frighten the
children.

"If we start discrimination, we'll end up not taking any specimens,"
von Billmann said.  "But then that may be the best thing."

He was evidently having second thoughts.

"The woman may have a baby which is being taken care of temporarily by
a neighbor or an old woman," the Englishman said.

"The children will be horribly frightened," von Billmann said.

Gribardsun smiled, shrugged, and stepped out from behind the big rock.
The woman saw him first.  Screaming, she dropped her firewood, grabbed
her children's hands, forcing them to drop their wood, and ran away.
The four men followed her slowly, and by the time they reached the
camp, they were confronted by a dozen armed warriors, howling defiance
and shaking spears and stone axes.

Establishing peaceful relations with this tribe took time, of course.
But a display of two colorful and loud shots from a Very gun quietened
them down.  Gribardsun approached them making signs of peace.  It so
happened that none of his signs agreed with theirs, but they understood
the intent back of them.  And though it took three days before the
travelers could approach a tribesman without the person beginning to
shake and to edge away, the time spent was well worth it.  Now, instead
of only several terrified prisoners, the scientists had an entire tribe
to study.  They stayed on good terms by a display of magic tricks and
by shooting several bison and holding a great feast afterward.

Their own tribe finally overcame their suspicious hostility and mingled
with the other for a while.  But this put such a strain on everybody
that Gribardsun requested the Wota'shaimg to stay away from the
strangers.

Von Billmann was happy because he had a new language but unhappy
because it seemed to be totally unrelated to his pre-Basque specimen.

After two weeks, the scientists led the Wota'shaimg away.  But they
made contact with another tribe farther south, the largest unit
encountered so far.  This consisted of eighty individuals, and they
used hardwood boomerangs.  Moreover, their speech was obviously related
to the Wotagrub of the north.  Von Billmann settled down for a
three-weeks' recording and interview session.  At the end of that time,
the two groups said farewell at a big feast of horse and ibex meat,
most of which was provided by Gribardsun's rifle.

It was during this time that the scientists began to have trouble with
Dubhab.

Dubhab was a friendly man, usually smiling and joking.  But behind the
jesting was a determination to get all he could from everybody he met.
Dubhab was the ancestor of all con men.  And he was exceedingly
ambitious.  Unlike the others, he was not content with his position in
the tribe.  He might never have tried to move out of his place in the
pecking order if the four strangers had not shown up.  But from the
beginning he had been very interested in the principles and operation
of the firearms and the drugs and medicines.

Gribardsun had explained as well as he could within the technically
limited vocabulary of the Wota'shaimg.  And he had permitted Dubhab to
handle the firearms and to shoot animals several times.

This was a mistake.  The other authorities, jealous, asked to use the
guns.  Gribardsun saw that it would not be good if the tribesmen
overcame their awe of the thunder sticks, as they called them.  They
might actually try to seize them and turn them on the scientists,
though this did not seem probable, since the tribesmen knew that the
four strangers had many other resources.  And they also regarded them
as not quite human; as being, in essence, spirits in flesh.

Gribardsun denied the requests.  He said that Dubhab had been allowed
to handle the guns only to test his reaction to them.  It was thought
wiser not to let anybody else try them, and, furthermore, Dubhab would
be denied their use from now on.  Dubhab smiled and said that whatever
the strangers wished was his wish also.  But Gribardsun wondered what
was behind that smile and the big blue eyes.  Dubhab continued to
praise the charms of his older daughter Neliska and to say openly that
Gribardsun should take her as a mate.  There was no doubt that Dubhab
hoped to profit from his position as father-in-law.

Neliska said that she would be honored to become Gribardsun's mate.
Gribardsun said that Neliska was very desirable, but he had no plans
for taking a mate for some time.

Dubhab then suggested, when he was alone with Gribardsun, that the
Englishman take Neliska without benefit of the marriage ceremony.  A
great spirit such as Gribardsun would not be bound by the conventions
that bound mere human beings.  And Neliska would be happy to bear a
child to the great spirit.

Gribardsun told Dubhab to shut up about this business or he would turn
him in to the elders.  And the elders might consider exiling Dubhab for
even thinking of breaking the customs of the tribe.

Dubhab turned gray at this remark.  Like all preliterates, he dreaded
more than anything being cut off from his tribe.  The mere suggestion
turned his bones to ice.

Yet it was only two days later that he remarked to Gribardsun that a
man equipped with firearms would be in a position to change the customs
of the tribe.

"That man is not only the archetypal con man," Rachel said.  "He is the
Ur-Napoleon, the pre-Hitler type."

The Basic-Napoleon-cum-Confidence-Man, however, was begging Gribardsun
a week later to pull one of his teeth.  He was suddenly suffering
excruciating pain from an impacted wisdom tooth.  The Englishman used
his tiny sonic machine to take pictures, and found that the tooth was
deeply abscessed.  Moreover, the other three teeth were rotten and
would have to come out.  And all three would fall apart during
extractions; they would probably have to be dug out.

Gribardsun explained to Dubhab what he had to do.  And he also made
sure that Dubhab understood that he now owed his life to Gribardsun. If
the teeth were left to natural processes, or to the brutal and
inadequate oral surgery of Glamug, Dubhab would die.  Gribardsun took
such pains to establish Dubhab's debt of gratitude because he wanted to
insure his behavior in the future.

The operation was a success, and the patient did not die, although
there were times when he said he would almost rather be dead.

The entire tribe witnessed the operation.  The most remarkable thing to
them was that Dubhab slept through it.

Glamug asked for, and received, Dubhab's teeth, which were mainly
fragments.  He put them into a little skin pouch, waved his one-eyed
baton de commandement over it while he chanted protective phrases, and
then buried them secretly on the side of a mountain under a rock.  No
one would be able to use them in magical rites against Dubhab.  But
Gribardsun suspected that Glamug kept several small pieces of a wisdom
tooth in case Dubhab ever became hostile to him.

Then again, perhaps Glamug was innocent.  By custom, Dubhab could kill
him and go free if he caught Glamug using any parts of his body nails,
teeth, hairs, saliva against him.

Dubhab recovered amazingly fast, helped by the antibiotics and
Gribardsun's care.  Three days later, the tribe packed their tents and
belongings and moved southward again.  Gribardsun marched at the head.
Behind him were his three colleagues.  Behind them was Glamug, shaking
his baton or the pebbles in a gourd at the end of a stick.  Then
Thammash the chief and Angrogrim the greatest warrior.  And then
Wazwim, the singer, who was in one sense as much a witch doctor as
Glamug, since most songs were sung for magical purposes.  After Wazwim
was Shivkaet, the carver and the painter, who did much of his work
under the supervision of Glamug.  His products were mostly used for
magical purposes, too.  Then came Dubhab, who had lost his smile and
seemed much withdrawn and grouchy.  After him came other males
according to their unstated but well-recognized rank in their society.
And then the women and children according to their ranks.

The flanks and the rear were guarded by the lesser warriors and
juveniles who had not been 'blooded' as yet.  The 'blooding," in most
cases, would consist of a symbolic conflict during a ceremony.  There
was very little actual fighting between tribes.  The hostilities with
the Wotagrub had taken more casualties in a few minutes than even the
oldest man, Kwakamg, remembered having taken place in his whole life.
Occasionally a lone hunter or perhaps a couple of hunters had
accidentally run into alien hunters and there had been some exchange of
spears or rocks.  And now and then a man had been killed or a woman or
child ambushed.  But these incidents were infrequent.  In fact, several
days later, while Kwakamg was recounting the largest battle he
remembered, which had taken place during the Winter of the Red Snow,
Kwakamg dropped dead.  Whether it was the excitement of the memory
coupled with an age-weakened heart, or whether his heart would have
given way at that moment anyway, no one knew.  Gribardsun dissected him
because he was eager to get data on the incidence of heart disease
among the Magdalenians.  Kwakamg was white-haired and wrinkled and had
had a slight palsy.  But the dissection convinced Gribardsun that
Kwakamg was probably not more than sixty.  His heart was that of an
eighty-year-old man.  At some time in Kwakamg's life he had had
rheumatic fever.  He had also had rheumatism, smallpox, and had lost
about twelve teeth.  But six had been knocked out during an encounter
with a cave bear.  The others had been rotten, and Glamug had pulled
them out without much trouble for himself and only great pain for
Kwakamg.

Two days later, Gribardsun delivered the baby of Meena, a
sixteen-year-old woman, wife of Shimkoobt.  Both the mother and baby
would have died if Gribardsun had not been there, since he was forced
to take the infant by caesarian.

Glamug told him that caesarians were not unknown.  But almost always
the mother died and the baby was lucky to survive.

Gribardsun recorded this data.  And he wondered when the first
caesarian had been performed.  No one would probably ever know, since
no time machine could yet go deeper into the past.

"So you have affected the future materially," Rachel said.  "Who knows?
If it weren't for you, many of us twenty-first centurians wouldn't
exist.  Perhaps even you wouldn't exist."

"Speculation is interesting but essentially useless," the Englishman
said.  "I have changed nothing.  Before I was born, everything I had
done in the past had been done."

"Let's not get involved in any more of these time paradoxes," Rachel
said.  "I always end up with a dizzy feeling, and slight sickness at
the stomach, after trying to untangle the metaphysics and super
mechanics of Time!"

"Time is something man will never comprehend," Gribardsun said. "Partly
because Time is outside man.  Man is, of course, partly in Time, but
there are elements of Time that are completely exterior to him.  He
can't even see those elements and never will because they can't be put
under the microscope or telescope or be detected by radiation-sensitive
equipment."

He and Rachel were walking down the slope of a valley.  He had three
hares on a rope slung over his shoulder.  The beasts had been caught in
traps, and the two were headed for another trap they had set two days
before.  The snow covered the ground by about two feet.  Tall green
snow-laden firs and pines rose on every side, but presently they came
to a clear stretch.  A dozen or so large boulders were scattered around
the clearing.  Their breaths steamed, and above them a large eagle
swung, running its stiff-winged shadow ahead of them.

Gribardsun had not wished to be alone with Rachel, but she had asked if
she could accompany him.  He disliked saying no, because she had
behaved toward him for months as if he were just another scientist.
Apparently she and Drummond were now living with no more than the
friction most married couples experienced.

"The thing to do is to enjoy Time as much as you can," he said.  "Live
as the beasts do.  From day to day.  If you think of the end of Time,
that is, of your own death, accept it as part of Time.  You can do
nothing about it, so why worry about it??

"But you, you're the exception' Rachel said, and then she stopped.  Her
eyes were wide and her mouth open.  Her hand was at her throat, as if
she would choke off her words.

"I am?"he said.  "Why?"

"I mean," Rachel said, 'that you, or anybody, might be the exception.
That's what I meant.  What if somebody found a means to extend his life
span for a very long time, and then...?"

"And then what?"  Gribardsun said.  He had stopped and was looking down
at her with large and bright gray eyes.

Rachel shivered, and yet she could not have been cold.  The sun was
warm and she was covered and hooded with the thin but very warm thermic
ron material.

"I was just speculating," she said.  "Surely, sometime in man's
history, somebody must have stumbled across an elixir of a sort,
something which kept a man young for a very long time.  Don't you think
that's possible?"

"It's possible," he said, smiling.  She shivered again.  "When I was a
young man, I heard stories among the natives of Africa about witch
doctors who had invented an elixir of youth.  It was also supposed to
confer immunity to all diseases.  But mankind wishes for such an elixir
and so he makes up stories to the effect that such a thing does
exist."

"Well," Rachel said, 'just suppose such a person as I postulated did
exist?  Wouldn't you think he'd become very lonely?  He'd see those he
loved get old and ugly and die.  And his own sons, and his grandsons,
would age and die.  And he'd be bound to fall in love many times, and
raise children, and each time his wife would inevitably die."

She stopped, licked her lips, and moved closer to him.  Her chin was
lifted high so she could look up into his eyes.

"Unless," she said, 'this man knew how to make the elixir.  Then he
could keep his wife and his children young also.  Of course, he'd have
to swear them to secrecy, and that might be such a dangerous thing that
he would hesitate.  It would be difficult for most people to keep such
a secret to themselves.  Most people, I say."

"But not for you?"  he said, smiling.

"Yes, but not for me!"  she said.

"I hope you find someone who has the elixir," he said.  "If he should
exist.  Which he won't in this era, of course.  Although you never
know.  Perhaps some plant exists which could provide the basis of an
elixir.  And then that plant will become extinct.  But the elixir only
has to be used once.  The effect of the elixir might be permanent,
relatively speaking."

"Maybe I shouldn't be saying anything," she said.  "But when you were
gone, visiting the Wotagrub, Drummond and Robert and I had a long talk
about you.  We concluded that there was something very strange about
your being chosen as a member of this expedition.  And we agreed that
there was something strange about your background.  Every once in a
while you let slip some peculiar remarks that can only be accounted for
by your having lived a long long time, far longer..."

Gribardsun had not lost his smile.  He said, "I wonder if your
displacement in time hasn't resulted in some sort of shock.  Shall we
call it temporal shock?  Or the temporal syndrome?  A human being can't
be catapulted backward in time, to an age so alien in nature, so
savage, and so very far away from his own world, without suffering a
neurosis or perhaps even psychosis."

"If that were true, then you'd be just as much in shock as we," she
said.  "But you're getting me off the track.  I was..."

She stopped.  He had looked up over her shoulder at something far up
the hill.  He had stiffened.

"What's wrong?"  she said.  She turned around and looked up the steep
slope.  But she could see only the sun-bright snow and the green and
white firs and pines, the eagle; and several gray shadowy shapes wolves
far to the right near the top of a ridge.  But he was looking to the
left.

"I thought I saw something moving up there," he said.  "Among the
trees."

She moved against him and put her arms around him without thinking
about it.  It was the expression of her long-repressed desire, and he
knew it at once.  She realized it several seconds later, but by then it
was too late.  She did not withdraw; she stood on her toes and kissed
him.

The bullet tore the fabric of their solitude within an inch of their
ears or so it seemed and then the report of the rifle reached them.

Gribardsun shoved her sprawling into the snow and dived after her.

Rachel had uttered a muffled scream.  Now she raised her head, looking
like a snow maiden.  The powdery stuff was over her face and ringing
her large blue eyes.

"It's Drummond!"  she said.  "But why would he do it?  How could he?
It's not like him!  He's not violent!  He's not a murderer!"

Gribardsun may have considered that her husband was the most probable
suspect.  But he said, "Let's not accuse anybody until we know for
certain who..."

Another bullet cut off his speech; it came so close that it almost
seemed to have severed the words issuing from his mouth.  It threw up a
spray of snow only an inch before him.

Gribardsun rolled to one side and then said, "Very good shooting, or
the man's very lucky.  He couldn't have seen me behind the snow, I
don't think.  Get over behind that boulder!"  Rachel crawled swiftly to
the designated rock, and another bullet threw up snow a few inches from
her foot.  Gribardsun said, a moment later, "I think he's about four
hundred yards away, judging from the difference in time between the
bullet striking and the time it takes the report to reach us."

Rachel moaned.  "What reason could Drummond have?  We've never done
anything!"

"Reason?"  Gribardsun said.  He did not add anything, but she
understood him.  Human beings were far more motivated by
irrationalities than by reason.

Gribardsun waited until another bullet had gone by and then rolled over
to the boulder behind which Rachel crouched.  He broke open his 365
rifle to make sure that the barrel was unclogged by snow, and then he
told Rachel to stay where she was.

He jumped up and dived into the snow, rolled, and was behind a tree.

Rachel heard two more shots and then could not resist looking around
the side of the boulder.  She could see neither man.  The top of the
hill looked empty of life.  Gribardsun must be fairly near, but he was
behind a tree somewhere up the hill.  She waited for an hour by her
watch.  Only one more shot was fired during that time.  She cried and
wiped the tears away and then cried some more.  She could not believe
that her husband was really trying to kill her.  Perhaps he had been
shooting just at Gribardsun, but no, those first bullets had come too
near her as well.  He must not have cared whether he struck her or
Gribardsun.

Presently she heard John's voice far away.  Cautiously, she looked over
the boulder.  He was a tiny figure near the top of the mountain.  He
was waving at her to come up.  A moment later he used his amplifier.
His voice bellowed down at her, like God's telling His worshipper to
ascend the Mount of Judgment.

It took her half an hour to get to him.  The snow was deep most of the
way, and the slope was steep.  By the time she reached him, she was
breathing as if she had asthma.

She did not want to see what he was pointing at, but she knew that she
must sooner or later.  And she was also aware that she did not want to
show weakness before John.  She dreaded his contempt, even though she
had never experienced it.

Drummond was sitting in a hollow of snow.  His face was between his
mittened hands, and he was rocking back and forth.  His hood was off,
permitting her to see a bloody patch on the back of his head.  His
rifle was gone.

Gribardson pointed at tracks leading away from the hollow down over the
other side of the ridge.  "Drummond was watching us," he said.  "But he
claims that he did not shoot us, and I believe him.  Someone came up
behind him while he was spying on us, hit him over the head, shot at us
with his rifle, and then left with it before I could get close to
him."

"It couldn't be Robert!"  she said.

"I doubt it very much," John Gribardsun said.  "But if it was an
aborigine, he'd have to be one of our tribesmen, since nobody else
would have the faintest notion how to operate a rifle.  The only one
who's had any practice at all is Dubhab, and he's not had enough to be
as good a shot as the man who was shooting at us."

"Maybe' Rachel looked up, and she stopped.

Drummond looked up from between his mittens at her.  His eyes were
large, bloodshot, and miserable.

"Maybe Drummond was shooting at us, and then the intruder knocked him
over the head and took his rifle away," Gribardsun finished for her.

"That's a lie!"  Drummond said.

"It's only a speculation," Gribardsun said.  "And don't imply I'm a
liar any more.  You're in no position to be calling names or accusing
anybody of anything."

"Are you all right, Drummond?"  Rachel said.  She sounded sympathetic,
but she did not make any move toward him.

"My head feels as if I have a fracture."

Gribardsun examined his scalp and then applied the sonic photo camera
to the wound.  Six seconds later, the film slid out of the tiny box. He
looked at it through a magnifying glass and said, "There's no fracture
of the skull.  But you do have a slight concussion."

"Slight!"  Drummond said.

"You're lucky to be alive," Gribardsun said.  "You escaped killing
twice."

"Why don't you put me out of my misery?"  Drummond said.

"Don't be an ass," the Englishman said, and he lifted Drummond to his
feet.  "You saw us kissing, no doubt.  That was entirely
unpremeditated; it was brought about because of a peculiar
concatenation of circumstances.  Not that it might not happen again, if
you continue to be such an utter nincompoop."

"A what?"  Drummond said.

"An archaic word," Gribardsun said.  "Another nail in the coffin of
your absurd suspicions.  You forget that I'm more than a doctor and
physical anthropologist.  I'm also a linguist."

He turned Drummond over to Rachel, and she half supported him while
Gribardsun led the way down the other side of the mountain.  He
followed the deep tracks of the intruder.  Occasionally he halted and
warned the others to get down in the snow while he reconnoitered.  When
the possibility of an ambush was cleared away, he motioned them to
continue.

The tracks suddenly disappeared when they were within a quarter of a
mile of the campsite.  The man had taken to a pile of boulders and
smaller rocks, the tops of which had been swept clean of snow by the
wind.  He had leaped from one bare spot to another.  Since the rocks
were widespread, and since there were many tracks from the tribes
people around the rocks, the man had effectively eluded them.

He would, however, have had to conceal the rifle and the box of
ammunition he had stolen.  This he could easily do by taking the rifle
apart and concealing it under the heavy fur garments.  But if he
thought to hide it in his tent, he would soon be found out.  There was
very little privacy inside the camp and few places to hide anything
inside a tent.  He would have to conceal the rifle inside furs, and the
first time one of his family bumped into the bundle, the contents would
be detected.  It was probable that the rifle and ammunition had been
hidden somewhere in the several acres of rock detritus near the camp.

Gribardsun put Drummond inside his plastic hut and made another
examination.  Then he went straight to the tent of Dubhab.  Laminak
greeted him with her usual joy and unconcealed worship.  Gribardsun
gave no evidence that he was looking for her father.  He chatted with
her for a few minutes, then said that he mustn't be holding up her
work, which was sewing a parka.  Where was her father?

Laminak said that he was out hunting of course.  She hoped he would
bring home at least as much as Gribardsun had, she said, looking at the
hares still slung over his shoulder.

Gribardsun saw nothing in her demeanor to indicate she was lying.
Besides, he did not think that she would make the slightest effort to
deceive him.  She loved him more than anybody, even her father.

Gribardsun gave her a hare and left, though she was trying desperately
to keep him by asking a string of questions.  He said he would speak to
her later, then stooped and went out through the exit.  At that moment
Dubhab left the woods nearby and approached the camp under the overhang
of rock.  He saw Gribardsun waiting for him but did not check his pace.
He smiled when he got closer and loudly greeted him.

Gribardsun had decided by then that Dubhab had hidden the rifle if he
was the thief and that it would be better not to let him know he was a
suspect.  He talked with him for a few minutes, inquired about his
hunting, and was told that Dubhab had been very unlucky.  Gribardsun
mentioned that he had left a hare for his family, and walked away.

That evening, after everybody had eaten, he announced at the council
fire that they would be moving on the next day.  And their journey for
many days would be hard.  He wanted to get as far south as possible.
Once they had reached a warmer land, they would stop.  The next day, he
watched Dubhab as closely as possible.  But the man went about his
normal business in a normal manner.

Five

Drummond came out of his white cone several hours after dawn.  He moved
slowly as if he had aged considerably overnight or was in great pain.
He reported only a slight headache, however.  Again, he asserted that
he was innocent.

"Rachel and I have had our trouble, no denying that," he said.  "And
she is very much attracted to you.  I don't know whether it's because
she is on the bounce from me or if she would have fallen for you in any
event.  Even I can see what she means by your animal magnetism.  And
you've become doubly attractive in this world; you could well have been
born in it, you fit in with it so well.

"And I don't deny I've been jealous.  But, damn it, I'm not a murderer!
I'm a scientist!  I didn't get my doctorate by lacking severe
self-discipline.  I have a tremendous amount of self-control.  Too
much, in fact.  It's not my nature to kill, and even if it were, I have
the strength to repress such an urge."

Gribardsun waited until he was through.  He said, "All this talk means
nothing.  When I catch the man who took your rifle, I'll get his story
from him, one way or another.  Until then, let's drop the subject."

"But I don't want you suspecting me!"  Drummond said.  "You'll never
trust me behind you again!"

"I don't trust anyone behind me," Gribardsun said.  "Everyone is
automatically suspect."

He walked away.  An hour later the tribe was ready, and it started down
the mountains toward the great plains of Spain.  These were not the
semideserts that Gribardsun had known.  They were well watered and
covered with grass and there were many trees.  They also had an
abundance of animal life: great herds of bison, horses; the giant
aurochs, and the infrequent mammoths and rhinoceroses.  The lions of
the plains were smaller than the cave lions; they resembled the African
lion of the reservations of the twenty-first century.

Gribardsun said that even now he found it strange to see lions in snow.
But then that was just because he had associated the big cats with the
tropics.  After all, the Siberian tiger and the snow leopard of the
twentieth century (both extinct in the twenty-first) had lived quite
well in freezing climates.

He decided to camp for several weeks.  The place chosen would be, in
approximately 11,000 years or so, the city of Madrid.  He ignored the
protests of the tribesmen, who said that he was contradicting himself
in stopping here when he had said that they would not pause until they
reached a warm country.  He told them that he wanted to study the
hunting habits of lions in snow and ice.  Moreover, there was a tribe
about six miles away which could provide another language for von
Billmann's recorders.

Lramg'bud, a juvenile, was blooded at this time.  With an atlatl and
two spears, a stone axe and a knife, he went after a male lion that was
eating a freshly killed horse.  The lion acted as if it could not
believe the stupidity of the man.  Surely no one would be unintelligent
enough to attack it while it was dining.  But Lramg'bud went on in,
looking brave enough, though there was no telling what his feelings
were.  The lion at last decided that he would not put up with the fool
dancing around and stabbing at him.  He charged, and the youth slammed
a spear through the big cat's shoulder with an atlatl.  The lion got up
on three legs, and Lramg'bud drove his second spear deep into its
chest.  Despite this, the lion got to him and knocked his axe away with
a bat of his massive paw.  Lramg'bud seized the spear sticking from the
chest and clung to it while the lion carried him backward.  Suddenly,
the beast collapsed; blood poured from its mouth; its eyes glazed.  And
Lramg'bud had a lion's head and lion's skin cloak to wear.

Everybody was happy, and the warriors feasted on lion meat that
evening.  Gribardsun ate his share raw.  Lately he seldom ate cooked
meat.  Von Billmann had joked about this, and the Englishman had
replied that he had always preferred raw meat.  Von Billmann said that
it was dangerous; raw meat was too likely to be infested with
parasites.  Gribardsun had merely smiled and continued chewing.

"It's not a question of when in Rome, do as the Romans do," Rachel
said.  "Even these savages cook their meat thoroughly.  It disturbs
them that you eat yours bloody."

"Chacun a son gout," Gribardsun said and licked the blood off the
corners of his mouth.  The fire lit his rugged and handsome face and
seemed to be reflected in his gray eyes.  Rachel turned away and went
back to the women's feast.  She had come over to the chief's 'table' to
ask him a question and had been unable to resist joining the
conversation.

Drummond looked at Gribardsun with an indecipherable expression.  When
he saw the Englishman's eyes on him, he looked down.  But he was doing
only what everybody did who tried to outstare Gribardsun.

Three days later, they packed and left.  Efforts to make friendly
contact with the nearest strangers had failed.  The tribe had picked up
and decamped northward.

The fourth night after leaving the site of Madrid-to-be, somebody shot
out the lock of the door of Gribardsun and von Billmann's hut, stuck
the barrel in, and blazed away.  After discharging five cartridges, the
rifle was withdrawn, and the man who had fired ran away.

If the rifleman had moved the barrel around a wider arc, he would have
struck both occupants a number of times.  In which case it is doubtful
that either would have lived, since the impact of the high-velocity and
heavy bullets was deadly.

But he had made the mistake of blowing out the lock when he could
instead have fired straight through one of the walls.  And he had moved
the muzzle only a few inches to either side, not enough to send the
bullets past one of the small boulders set inside the hut to hold it
down.  They had simply ricocheted off the boulder and out again through
the walls.

Though unhurt, the two men had been deafened by the explosions.  They
sat in their original positions for twenty or so seconds after the
explosions ceased, unable to hear the slapping of the would-be killer's
soft leather boots on the rock.  Then Gribardsun, rifle in one hand,
burst through the doorway, banging the door to one side and tearing it
off with the impact of his body.

By then the camp was awake.  Several torches were thrust into the
embers of fires, and the people came out of their tents.

Gribardsun immediately ordered a head count.  Thammash and Glamug lined
everybody up and had them call out by name.

Before the counting was done, a rifle exploded somewhere in the
darkness.  A bullet skimmed Gribardsun's shoulder.  He rolled away into
the darkness, out of the light of the torches, and then was up and into
the nearby woods.

The Englishman had had many years of experience as a woodsman.  He
could move through the forest, winter or summer, without making a
sound.  But the man he was hunting had been born in a world where a man
has to be one with the woods or starve.  He had disappeared somewhere
deep into the trees.  Gribardsun finally found his tracks and started
after him, avoiding but staying closely parallel to the tracks.  Snow
began to fall, and he realized that his quarry's trail would soon be
covered.  Moreover, if he did not return to the camp, he might find
himself lost or bogged down.

The wind had come up, and the snow was pelting down when he got back to
camp.  By then, von Billmann had started the head count again.
Gribardsun waited to one side grimly.  He looked for Dubhab and did not
see him and then, suddenly, Dubhab was coming out of his tent.  He had
gone back into it when the shot came from the woods, he said.

Nobody was missing.  The rifleman had circled back and sneaked into
camp during the hullabaloo.

The Englishman regarded him for a moment and then he, too, smiled.
"Light some more torches!"  he said.  "Robert, set up some lights and
equipment in our hut!  We'll give them the paraffin test!"

Von Billmann and the Silversteins looked puzzled.  Gribardsun spoke in
Wota'shaimg so that the tribe could understand what he intended to do.
He explained that when a man fired a rifle, he got some small particles
of the gunpowder on his hand or on his clothes.  This could be detected
through the use of a substance known as paraffin.  It would be easy to
find out who had fired the rifle by examining the hands, or the gloves,
of every man in the camp except, of course, those whom Gribardsun knew
were not in the woods.

Von Billmann said in English, "I never heard of that test, John.  Is
that some more of your old lore?"

"The paraffin test was used at one time, Robert," Gribardsun said. "But
it wasn't used exactly as I said.  Nor would we use it under these
conditions, even if we had the paraffin.

"That doesn't matter.  What does is that the would-be killer will
believe that we can detect him with these means, and he..."

Dubhab had suddenly started running.  He went past Glamug and Thammash
and Angrogrim, his short legs pumping rapidly, his face a twist of
despair.

Gribardsun's hand moved; suddenly it held a steel knife.  He threw it,
it glittered in the torchlight, and then its hilt was sticking out of
the bear fur over Dubhab's back.

Later, Gribardsun said that he believed in swift justice.  He did not
want a trial because that would have been too painful for Dubhab's
family and there was no reason to make the man himself suffer.
Moreover, if he had tried to capture the man, and had failed, Dubhab
might have gotten to his hidden rifle in time to use it.

The other scientists were shocked, though not as much as they would
have been had they not had time to get used to this world.  Justice in
their world was often agonizingly slow.  Everything that could be done
to safeguard the rights of the accused and of the accuser was done.
Moreover, no person had been executed for a crime for sixty years
anywhere in the world.  And prison was unknown except as a means for
restraining dangerous people while they underwent therapy.

Gribardsun said, "I don't believe that we'll ever find the rifle."

Rachel cried, "Is that all you can think about?  My God, you just
killed him as if he were an animal!  He didn't have his chance in a
trial; you judged and convicted and executed him in two seconds!"

Gribardsun did not reply.  He withdrew his knife and wiped it clean and
then walked over to Thammash and Glamug and spoke briefly to them.
Angrogrim picked up Dubhab and carried him to his tent, where he
stretched him out a few feet in front of the entrance.  Amaga, Abinal,
Laminak, and Neliska stared for a while, pale and tearless, at the body
and then they went inside the tent and closed the flap.

By morning, Dubhab's body was frozen stiff.  The funeral took all day,
and he was buried under a pile of rocks in the midst of general
mourning.  That he had been a criminal and a traitor did not matter
after he had died.  He was then one of the tribe and to be treated with
all the honors of any brave warrior and good hunter, which he had been
most of his life.

Afterward, Gribardsun found what obligations he had taken upon himself
by killing Dubhab.  He was now responsible for Dubhab's family.  It was
up to him to provide for them.

Abinal's attitude toward the Englishman did not seem to have changed.
But when he became a man, he would have to decide whether to forgive
Gribardsun or kill him.  He knew that; everybody knew that.  For the
time being, the matter would be put into abeyance.

Amaga did not care who took care of her.  Gribardsun told her that he
would protect her and hunt meat for her.  But he was not her mate and
did not intend to be.  Amaga was indignant and justly so, since tribal
custom decreed that Gribardsun should replace Dubhab in all his duties.
He stated simply that he did not care to.  Amaga then told all the
tribe, but for the first time the tribe did not dare to punish a custom
breaker.  The woman sullenly accepted the reality of the situation, but
a short time later she brightened.  Perhaps Gribardsun preferred the
beautiful and hard-working Neliska as his mate?  Gribardsun said he was
considering that.  Rachel looked shocked.

Drummond smiled but did not say anything to her.  Neliska looked happy.
Laminak, weeping, ran away.

Rachel said, "But you'll be leaving in a few years!  Would you just
walk out on her?  Or were you thinking of taking her back with you as a
specimen?  That would be cruel; she could never adjust to the
bewildering modern world.  Anyway, she's a tribal creature, and she'd
die if she were cut off from her people."

"I said I was considering her as a mate," Gribardsun said.  "I didn't
say when I would come to a decision.  I rather believe that by the time
I'd be able to speak for her, she would be long married."

Rachel later said to Drummond, "I don't think I'll ever understand that
man.  His thought processes are too deep.  Or maybe just too different.
That's something not quite normal?  human, about him."

"Time keeps a man human.  But eternity would give him a nonhuman
dimension," Drummond said.  "Perhaps he isn't quite human.  But I just
can't go along with your theories about someone finding the elixir.  I
just can't believe in such a phenomenon as an elixir.  Especially in
the nineteenth century, which would be when Gribardsun was born, if you
were right.  That business about the first time machines and the limits
of the 1870s indicates that something is rotten."

At the time this conversation took place, they had just crossed the
half-frozen Guadiana River.  Four days later, after they had
established a camp on the south side of a heavy brake of trees,
Drummond attacked Gribardsun.

The assault was entirely verbal, although there was one moment when the
tall thin physicist seemed on the point of attacking the Englishman
with his fists.

Ever since the incident of the stolen rifle, Gribardsun had refused to
let Drummond hunt with him.  He went either with Rachel or von
Billmann, and Drummond found that a tribesman was always shadowing him
when Gribardsun was out on a hunt.  He said nothing about this, not
even to his wife, until the evening of the fourth day after crossing
the Guadiana.  Gribardsun said that they would camp there for several
days while he went out hunting wild horses with a dozen tribesmen.  He
intended to restrict himself this time to native weapons again.  Von
Billmann would go along as 'shotgun," as usual.

Drummond belligerently said that he intended to accompany them.

Fine," Gribardsun said.  "If you leave your firearms here."

"Why should I?"  Drummond leaped up, his hands balled.

"I want to make sure there are no accidents."

"Accidents, hell!  You mean you want to make sure I don't shoot you in
the back, is that it?"  Drummond yelled.

"That is exactly it," Gribardsun said coolly.

"Damn you, you have no right to suspect me of trying to kill you!"
Drummond screamed.  "I admit I was watching you two, and I have every
right to do so, and from what I saw, my suspicions were justified!  But
I did not shoot at you!  It was Dubhab, and you know it!"

"I don't know any such thing," Gribardsun said.  "As for your
suspicions being valid, what did you see?  Nothing really, because
nothing happened.  Nor will it, unless you bring it about with your
psychotic jealousy.  Frankly, Silverstein, I don't understand what's
happened to you.  I saw your psych ratings, and they indicated a stable
character and a reasonably well-adjusted marriage.  But all of a sudden
you go ape."

Gribardsun smiled when he said the last two words, and Drummond
wondered why, but he did not ask.

"I think that the sudden thrust into a strange world, the temporal
dislocation, caused an emotional imbalance.  Let's hope that you regain
your normal state of emotion before long.  Otherwise, you may end up
insane or dead."

"Is that a threat?"  Drummond shouted.

"I don't make veiled threats.  I am merely stating likely
alternatives."

Gribardsun paused and then said, "I am sorry that this happened,
because an efficient scientific team needs as little friction and as
much good will as possible among its members.  We have a relatively
short time to do much, and we shouldn't be wasting it with human
pettiness.  So..."

"Pettiness!"  Drummond yelled.  "You call losing my wife a pettiness?
Being accused of attempted murder is a pettiness?"

"You haven't lost your wife nor have Rachel and I done anything to
deserve your condemnation.  Nor have I accused you of attempted murder.
But you are definitely under suspicion."

Drummond lifted his open hands to the night sky and said, "How long?
How long?  Do I have to go the rest of my life under suspicion?  What
charges will you bring when we get back?  Would you wreck my career on
the basis of nothing at all, circumstantial evidence and weak at that?
What can I do to clear myself?  Would you hold a trial?"

"There is no way of clearing you," Gribardsun said.  "So I propose that
we continued to work together and try to get along together as best we
can.  I just do not propose to put myself in a position where I will be
at your mercy."

"Look at her!  Look at her!"  Drummond said, pointing at Rachel.  "The
devoted wife!  The trusting spouse!  My beautiful innocent loving
Rachel!  She believes you!  She thinks I was trying to shoot you!"

"Or her.  Or both of us," Gribardsun said.

"Drummond, you're sick," Rachel said.  "I just can't believe that you
would try to kill anybody.  I've known you too long.  And yet, I never
knew you to be jealous, at least, not abnormally so.  Something has
happened to you, and it makes me sick, just simply sick in the pit of
my soul.  But..."

"Go to hell!  Go to hell, both of you!"  Drummond said.  He looked at
von Billmann, who had been sitting with head bowed, sipping on his
coffee.

"You can go to hell too!"

"What did I do to you?"  von Billmann said.

"You believe them, not me!"  Drummond said, and stamped off into the
darkness.

The others were silent.  They had been sitting on inflatable cushions
around a wood fire.  Their huts were two white cones in the firelight.
From thirty yards away came the sound of many voices as the tribesmen
called back and forth and laughed at jokes.  They were happy.  Nobody
was sick, and they had plenty of meat.

The explorers had made their camp some distance from the others because
they had wanted to discuss their plans for tomorrow without
interruption.  They intended to study the region for three days before
moving on.  But Drummond's outbursts had cut off the planned
conversation.

Rachel looked out into the starless and moonless night and said, "I
hope he comes back soon.  It's dangerous wandering around out there.
He's only got his pistol, too."

"I'd suggest a physical and mental examination for him," Gribardsun
said.  "But he would object, and he might be justified.  I don't know
how objective I myself could be in my examination."

"Do you suppose it could be temporal shock?"  Rachel said.

"I think so," von Billmann said.  "I'm only just now getting my sense
of reality back.  For a long time everything seemed distorted, out of
focus slightly, you might say.  Weird.  Simply not true to reality. How
about you, John?  Did you feel anything like that?"

"The first three or four days," Gribardsun said.  "Though even that was
not an overpowering feeling by any means."

Von Billmann went to bed.  The tribesmen crawled into their tents and
tied the flaps shut.  Rachel and Gribardsun sat before the fire and
stared into its flames or looked now and then into the snow-white
night.  The only sound was the crackling of the firewood, the distant
howl of a wolf, and an even more distant bellowing from some aurochs in
some snow-walled area.

After a while, Rachel looked up across the fire at Gribardsun.  Tears
were running down her cheeks.  "Drummond and I should be so happy," she
said.  "We don't really have any reasons for friction between us.  We
share so many common interests, and before he got moody he was
sometimes amusing, though too serious most of the time.  But not
always.  And we were chosen to go on this expedition, and that alone
should have kept him happy.  But..."  She wiped the tears away and
swallowed and then said, "But something happened.  He's so miserable
and unhappy.  And everything is just ruined for us, just ruined.  It'll
never be like it was.  It just can't be.  And if he keeps on the way he
has, he'll end up trying to kill you or me or both.  Or probably he'll
kill himself.  He has a tendency to turn his anger inward against
himself."

Gribardsun said, "Most human beings seem to go wrong in one way or
another to a greater or lesser degree.  They're much less stable than
animals, and this instability is the price humans pay for their
sentience and their complicated emotional system.  Self-consciousness
and the power of speech are the requisites, though not the only ones,
for progress in man.  But man pays for his greater potentiality by a
greater vulnerability to imbalance.  And your Drummond is just one of
the ten billion imbalances of the twenty-first century."

"And that theory makes me one of the ten billion unbalanced too,
right?"  she said.  "Well, God knows that I know that.  But what about
you, John?"

"Human, all too human," he said, smiling slightly.  "But my early life,
the really formative period, was rather peculiar.  I'm not sure that I
look at the world through an entirely human prism.  But that doesn't
really make much difference in my response to the world.  The kind of
imbalance that I am talking about is largely genetic.  The very nature
of a man's nervous system forces him to stumble; he makes mistakes and
errors and reacts in a unique egotistic manner to the world, and he
gets sick.  Mental sickness is the sentient's way of life, you might
say.

"I suppose I was lucky.  I have an unusual stability.  But for that I
must pay a price, of course.  What that price is..."

"Oh, you're so mysterious!"  she said.  "You've been talking a lot and
you've said almost nothing meaningful!  What is all this about your
early years?  Weren't you raised by human beings?  Surely you aren't
some sort of Mowgli or Romulus or Remus?  Everybody would have heard
about it if you had been, and, besides, the very idea is ridiculous.
And I happen to know that you were born on the Inner Kenyan Reservation
and you were raised by your parents and the black natives."

"That's what the records say."

"I know what you've been doing with all this mysterious nonsensical
talk.  You've been taking my mind off Drummond!

You're very clever.  But thoughtful.  I thank you for your concern. But
I have to worry about him.  What is he doing out there, wandering in
the snow?  He might get lost or some bear or lion might get him,
or..."

"This isn't mountain country so there aren't any bears, and besides,
the bears are hibernating," he said.  "And we haven't seen a lion for
days."

"The wolves!"  she said.

"When he left he knew what he was walking into," Gribardsun said.  "I
suggest that you go to bed and put him out of your mind, if you can.
He'll be coming home soon enough, and in the morning we'll see how he
feels.  We do have work to do, you know, and..."

He started to rise, but she said, "Sit down, John.  Please!  Just for a
moment!  Don't leave me!"

He lowered himself on the cushion again and said, "Very well.  I'll
stay a little while, if it will help you."

She leaned forward and said, "John!  Do you or do you not love me?"

He smiled slightly again, and she said, "Don't laugh at me!"

"I wouldn't do that," he said.  "I was just thinking of well, never
mind.  There were women bold enough even in my youth.  I knew more than
one who would come out with the same question if she felt the need for
an answer.  But I sometimes forget how free modern women are.  That,
however, is neither here nor there, is it?  You asked, and you shall
receive.  I find you very attractive, Rachel, and if you were free, I
might ask you to marry me.  But you aren't free, and I am
old-fashioned.  I don't believe in adultery, and I wouldn't try to
break up a marriage or take advantage of the fact that it's breaking
up.  I don't love you with the intensity or the passion you meant when
you asked me if I loved you.  I do like you very much.  But I don't
love you."

There was a silence.  Something white, a huge bird, glided past the
snow-laden branches of the trees just on the edge of the firelight.

Finally, Rachel said, "I thought you weren't in love with me, but I was
hoping that you were and that you felt you couldn't say or do anything
because I was still married.  But you don't love me, and I thank you
for telling me so honestly, even though it does hurt."

"I seldom have regrets," he said, 'since regret changes nothing.  But I
am sorry that this whole affair developed.  It's not only making you
and Drummond unhappy, and making Robert miserable and myself uneasy;
it's decreasing the scientific efficiency of all four of us."

"And we have an obligation to those who sent us here," she said.  "I
know.  But what can I do to make things better?"

"Call me when Drummond gets in," he said.  I'll get up, and we'll have
this out before breakfast, if he shows up soon enough, of course."

"I don't know that he'll listen to reason any more."

"Then he won't, and we'll proceed from there."

"You're so practical," she said.  "And so self-controlled."

"I've had much practice," he said.  He rose and walked to his hut and
then turned.  "I don't like to leave you alone, but there really is no
point in staying up.  If Drummond hasn't returned by morning, I may go
out after him.  He is an adult and so shouldn't have to be watched as
if he were a child.  But I am the head of this expedition, and it's up
to me to keep watch on my people."

Rachel sat for ten minutes by the fire and then went into her hut.

Six

The first paleness of dawn acted as alarm clocks on the Wota'shaimg.
The light seemed to penetrate the skins of their tents.  The light
touched their eyelids, and their lids opened.  They crawled out of
their tents into the start of a light snowfall.  They went into the
woods and emptied themselves, and then the women poked the embers
buried under deep ashes and piled on wood shavings made by flint knives
and then put on more wood.  The fires were roofed and partially walled
with boughs laid over each other in two layers.  The snow was beginning
to pile up on the fire huts, as they were called.  The men gathered
around the fire, hawking, blowing their noses, spitting, and grumbling.
They talked about the chances for hunting, which did not look good.
Fortunately they had plenty of meat and the partially digested contents
of bison and deer stomachs.  They could afford to lie around the camp
for a week, if they had to do so.  By lying around they did not mean
idleness.  They would be repairing their spears and harpoons and
working new flint and ivory and bone points, carving bone and ivory
figurines of animals for use in magic, and figures of women to bring
about increased fertility.

The three scientists ate their breakfast in a gloomy silence.
Immediately afterward, Gribardsun said that he would go out and look
for Drummond.  The others volunteered to go with him, but he said that
he could travel faster alone.  He put food, ammunition, and a small
camera in his backpack and left.  He carried collapsible snowshoes in
the pack too, but would not use these until out of sight of the
tribesmen.  It was agreed that the explorers would not introduce any
technological innovations to the Magdalenians.  Snowshoes were,
according to the twenty-first century anthropologists, not known to the
Europe of 12,000 B.C. But the explorers used them only when they were
unobserved by humans.

Gribardsun thought that this was an unnecessary precaution.  Obviously,
since late Paleolithic Europe had not known snow-shoes, then they would
not be introduced by the time travelers.  Thus, why worry?  Use them in
sight of the tribesmen.  Teach the tribesmen how to make them.  The
knowledge would be lost because it had been lost.

However, the agreement had been made, so he would stick to it.

Once around a low hill and out of sight of the Wota'shaimg, he put on
the snowshoes and set out swiftly on Drummond's trail.  The physicist
had gone around the hill and cut on a straight line across the plain,
which was about two miles wide.  He had not, as Gribardsun had
suspected he would, hung around to spy on him and Rachel.  Evidently he
wanted to get as far away as possible.

As the Englishman pushed across the flat and comparatively treeless
plain, the snow began to fall more heavily.  Before he reached the low
hills at the other end of the plain, the tracks were completely filled
in.

Gribardsun stopped among the trees and considered.  He could keep on a
straight line, hoping that Drummond had done the same.  Or he could
describe large circles, hoping to come across some sign of the man.  Or
he could do the sensible thing and return to camp.  Let Silverstein,
who had put himself in this mess, get himself out of it.

But Gribardsun's obligations included doing all he could to make the
expedition a success.  If he allowed Silverstein to die, he would be
cheating the world of the physicist's labors.  There was an immense
amount of work for each member of the expedition and if one were
eliminated, the others couldn't possibly replace him.  Besides, he just
did not like the idea of letting the man wander around until he died
even if it was his own fault.  There was a time when he would not have
cared if anyone lived or died unless the person's fate had happened to
touch his own interests.  But time had changed that.

He decided to take the straight line for another half a mile and then
describe a spiral.  He had traveled perhaps two miles and seen not a
sign of Drummond when he heard faint sounds far to his right.  He went
through a pass between two low hills covered with firs.  Beyond was a
series of broad low hills which ran for half a mile.  On the other side
was a low mountain, and at the base of this were twelve men.  They were
on their bellies, working their way through the snow behind various
large boulders.  Their goal was Drummond Silverstein, half hidden
behind a large boulder.  He was firing about once a minute to drive the
men back.  But they were slowly decreasing the distance between them.

Gribardsun watched them for a while.  They were big men with light
brown or blond hair and light skins.  They wore bear or bison skins;
they carried spears, axes, and leather slings and stones.  Two lay face
down on the snow with small pools of frozen blood radiating out from
them.  They knew what the thunder stick could do and yet they were
still going after the man using it.  This required high courage or a
low intelligence or possibly a combination of both.

Gribardsun walked out from behind the tree he had been using as a spy
post and slogged through the snow toward the fight.  A few seconds
later he dived into the snow.  A bullet had screamed by his head.

He did not cry out to Drummond that he had made a mistake.  Drummond
must have recognized him; the fact that he was carrying a rifle was
enough to identify him.  It was possible that Drummond was in a near
mindless frenzy and was shooting at anything that moved.  That often
happened to men without experience when they were first in battle.
However, he did not think that this was the situation.  Drummond had
certainly been cool and deliberate enough about firing at the natives
with his revolver.

Gribardsun began to work his way to the left toward a stand of
snow-laden trees part way up the hill.  But the natives had seen him,
and five of them were coming through the snow toward him.  They were
yelling and brandishing their spears in their gloved hands.  They
certainly made excellent targets for Silverstein, but he did not fire
at them.  It was then that Gribardsun decided that Silverstein had shot
at him knowing who he was.  Now Silverstein was hoping that the natives
would do what he had failed to do.

Gribardsun, still lying in the snow, raised his rifle, which was set
for single-shot action, and fired over the heads of the men advancing
upon him.  He did not think that would stop them, but he would make the
effort.  After that, if they continued, they deserved what they got.

They kept advancing, though they sank into the snow to their knees.

Gribardsun fired with about twelve seconds between each shot.  He
wanted the survivors to appreciate the fact that no shot was now
missing and that he was taking his time.  But three fell before the two
remaining decided to make off.  They slogged away at right angles to
their former path, determined to get away from both riflemen.

By then Silverstein had hit two more men in the snow, and the rest had
decided that it would be best to retreat.

Gribardsun had quit firing, but Silverstein knocked over every man who
stood up.

The total was fourteen dead.  Somewhere nearby was a tribe which had
lost much of its adult male population.

Gribardsun thought that Silverstein had truly gone insane.

By then he was behind a tree.  He adjusted the bullhorn amplifier
around his neck and roared, "Throw your gun out, and come out with your
hands up!"

"So you can shoot me down in cold blood!"  Drummond's amplifier
thundered back.

"You know I wouldn't do that!"  Gribardsun said.  "You're a sick man,
Drummond!  You need medical care!  That's all I'm concerned about!  I
want you to get well so you can do your work!  We need you!  And you
need us!"

"I don't need you or anybody!  I'm just going to keep on moving until I
can go no more!  And then I'll die!"

Gribardsun was silent for a while.  The snow had ceased falling, and
the grayness overhead was breaking up.  Several times in the next ten
minutes the sun shone through momentary brighter patches.  It fell on
the dark bodies scattered around the open arena.  From downwind came
the faraway cry of wolves.  These may have smelled the blood and might
be on their way to the promised feast.  If so, they would be late,
because six ravens had just flown in and alighted near a body.  But
there was enough to feed a hundred ravens.

The big black birds cautiously approached the body and then, deciding
that it was not playing possum, tore at it.  The eyes disappeared down
black throats; the lips were pecked and stripped away; the tongue began
to shred away in sharp beaks.

Gribardsun watched the eating indifferently.  If anything, he approved.
Ravens were one method for getting rid of garbage, of keeping the world
clean.

But Silverstein could not stand the sight.  He fired, and a raven flew
apart in a spray of black feathers.  The others took off cawing and
flew around describing black interrogation marks.  When they fluttered
back to the original corpse, they were scared away by another shot.
This missed them but struck the head of the corpse and split it open.
The ravens returned a second time and began to eat the blood and the
brains.  Silverstein did not shoot at them again.

Gribardsun stuck his head completely around the tree trunk, only to
jerk it back.  He was too late, of course, but the bullet gouged out a
big piece of trunk and screamed off to the right.  A few pieces of wood
were stuck in the left side of his face.  He picked them out while the
blood froze on his cheek.

A few minutes later he jumped.  Something had cracked loudly in the
woods behind him.

It could have been the cold splitting open a branch, but he could not
afford not to investigate.  He crawled away, keeping the tree between
himself and Silverstein until he got over a low ridge.  His scouting
revealed nothing except a fox which exploded from beneath a snow-heavy
bush, and, a minute later, the hare which the fox had been hunting.

Gribardsun watched the rodent with its big hairy feet bound along on
top of the thin frozen crust of the snow.  And then darkness exploded
in him.  When he awoke, he had a sharp pain in the back of his head. He
was lying on his side, and his hands were tied behind him.  A pair of
bison-hide boots were directly in front of his eyes.  He looked up
along wolf-hide trousers and a spotted black and white horse-hide
parka.  The man had a long dark beard with red undertones, thick black
eyebrows and greenish eyes.  He held a reindeer antler-tipped spear.

Gribardsun turned over slowly and saw six other strangers.

A moment later, three more came through the snow with a fourth whose
hands were tied behind him.

"This is a fine mess you've gotten us into!"  Drummond said.

Gribardsun might have smiled at this if his head had not hurt so much.
A stone axe must have been thrown at him.  That had to be so, since he
was sure that not even an aboriginal woodsman could get close enough to
hit him with a weapon in hand before he heard him.

He was sure that they had not arrived after the firing had ended.  They
must have been burrowed down in the snow, able to see him without his
seeing them.  Then, when he turned his back, one had gotten up slowly
and thrown his axe.

He was surprised that he was still alive, but he was glad.  While he
lived, he had hope.

A big man lifted him up and set him on his feet.  Then he knocked him
down again with a fist in his solar plexus.

Gribardsun writhed around for a while, sucking in air, though he was
not so badly hurt as he pretended.  He had had time to tense his
muscles and also to throw himself slightly backward to ride with the
blow.

The big man picked him up again, raised his fist, probably expecting
Gribardsun to wince, and then lowered it at a word from a man who
seemed to be the chief.

Gribardsun and Silverstein were led away to the south with a spearman
behind each to prod him if he lagged.  Their snowshoes had been left
behind.  Either the strangers had not seen them use them, and so did
not understand their use, or they were ignoring what they had seen
because they did not fully comprehend it.  But one man carried
Drummond's revolver in his belt.  The chief carried Gribardsun's rifle.
They had gone roughly half a mile when they saw a dozen or so gray
shapes drift along the side of the hill, sliding in and out between the
trees.  The wolves were on their way to the feast.

After two miles of hard walking or wading through heavy snow that was
sometimes waist-deep, they came to the camp.  This was pitched against
the south side of a steep hill and consisted of thirty-three
wigwam-like tents.  Trenches had been cut through the twenty-foot-high
drifts to connect the tents.  But snow was a good thermal insulation
material, and as long as the tents did not collapse, they would keep
the inhabitants warm.  As Gribardsun was to find out, the tribesmen had
dug out much of the snow immediately around the tents, leaving the top
projections untouched.  Thus, there was not as much weight on the tents
as there seemed at first sight.

At the moment, Gribardsun was in no position to make detailed
observations.  Some of the women, on hearing of the disastrous
casualties, launched screams and wails to the skies and their nails at
the faces of the prisoners.  Both men suffered deep gashes before the
men pulled the women off.  Gribardsun, however, kicked three women in
the stomach, knocking out two and making the third vomit.  He could
have killed all three but thought he would be better off if he did
not.

The big man who had hit him with his fist laughed when the women went
sailing out of the pack.  He slapped Gribardsun several times in the
face after he had rescued him, but not in a vengeful spirit.  The man
was grinning gap-toothed as he hit Gribardsun, as if he enjoyed seeing
the women hurt.  He also enjoyed hitting the prisoner, but he wasn't
out to hurt him badly.

The prisoners were led through a trench of snow which rose high over
Gribardsun's six-foot-three head.  The central tent of the three
concentric circles of tents was the largest.  The chief lived in this
with two adult women his mother, apparently, and his wife two juvenile
females, a juvenile male, a six-year-old boy and a year-old girl.
Wooden frames held the butchered carcasses of a deer and a quarter of a
bison and other frames held spears and axes and cutting and chopping
stones and sewing equipment of bone and sinew.  A single fire in the
center, confined in a stone hearth, sent blue smoke upward to the
narrow opening in the top.  It also sent much of the smoke around the
tent.

The occupants were naked except for loin strips, though the temperature
was about ten degrees above zero Fahrenheit except very near the fire.
The tent stank of stale sweat, saliva burning in the fire, wet furs
near the fire, rotting teeth, gummy dirt, rotten meat on some bones in
a corner, and excrement in two open dug-out trunks of wood used as
chamber pots.

After being out in the open, the stench was almost as bad as a fist
blow.  But both men had encountered this every time they had entered a
winter tent of the Wota'shaimg.  Gribardsun had adapted or at least had
not complained almost immediately.  Silverstein had never really become
at ease in the stench.

Three men pointed their spears at the two while the women removed the
packs from their backs.  All their clothes except their shorts were
taken off.  To get the parkas and undershirts off, their hands were
untied.  Gribardsun estimated his chances of breaking loose and decided
against them.  Even if he could get past the spears inside the tent and
the mob outside, he would be naked.  He still might escape freezing if
he ran all the way back to camp.  He did not have these people's
tolerance for cold, but he had more than most twenty-first
centurians.

However, his chances at this time were just too slim.  He would wait.

When his hands were retied, they were fastened in front of him.  This
was an advantage, but his ankle was tied by a tough sinew to the bottom
of a tent pole.  Silverstein was similarly tethered.  The sinew was
long enough for them to sit by the fire, which they did without
objection from anyone.  The chief and the big man seemed amused by the
shivering of their prisoners.

"What do you think is going to happen to us?"  Drummond said through
chattering teeth.

"I don't know," Gribardsun said.  "But since we killed so many,
somewhere near half their adult males, we'll probably be required to
suffer for it."

"Torture?"

"It's not outside the realm of possibility," Gribardsun said.

The men left.  The prisoners were in the charge of the juvenile male
and the women.  The juvenile sat on a pile of furs and pointed a spear
at them.  The women sat or squatted near the edge of the tent and
looked intently at their guests.  One of the young females was quite
pretty, if the dirtiness of her hair and face and the streak of mucus
running from nose to lip were discounted.  She looked back into
Gribardsun's eyes for a long time before dropping her gaze.  She wore
only a strip of wolf fur around her waist, revealing a well-rounded and
full-breasted form.  Her face was a modified and attractive version of
her father's.  But her mother's sagging fat figure was a sad
forecast.

Gribardsun was not that taken by her, but he did hope he could somehow
use her to escape.  So he gazed admiringly at her, smiled, and even
winked once.

That was a mistake.  She leaped up shrieking and plunged out through
the opening.

A minute later, the angry voices of the chief and other men were at the
entrance, and then the chief entered with a man whose painted face and
one-eyed baton de commandement indicated the witch doctor.  They were
followed by the big man who had previously hit Gribardsun and several
others.  The juvenile male was standing up, his spear jabbing at
Gribardsun.  His skin was pale and his knees were shaking.  The other
women looked frightened.  The juvenile was the only one who had seen
the wink.

Gribardsun could understand nothing of the words shouted at him, of
course.  But he understood after several minutes of dancing and
chanting by the doctor that he should not have winked.  To this tribe,
that was a form of the evil eye.  Gribardsun did not know what to do
next.  If he winked at the witch doctor, for instance, to show him that
his magic was stronger, then the witch doctor might logically decide to
put Gribardsun's eyes out.

What followed was unexpected but not unwelcome.  In this tribe, virtue,
that is, white magic, that is, the tribe's own magic, triumphed over
evil, that is, black magic, that is, the magic of another tribe.

But the magic must be put to the test, and so Gribardsun was taken
outside where he and the big man entered a small arena dug out of the
snow.  Silverstein was taken along.  The big man stripped naked, and
Gribardsun's bonds were untied and his shorts removed.  The adult males
then crowded around the walls of the snow pit, and juvenile males and
some of the other women pressed in behind them.

The big man was about six-foot-five and broader-shouldered,
heavier-legged, and thicker-armed than Gribardsun.  He had some fat but
not enough to give the impression of obesity.

Gribardsun understood without being told that this was to be trial by
combat.  He wondered, briefly, if this custom had actually arisen in
this tribe and spread out from there.  But he knew that it was doubtful
that one small group would have originated the custom.  In any event,
no one would ever know, since study of this period was so restricted.

He hopped up and down and flexed his legs and arms and worked his
fingers to restore his circulation.  His shivering, however, had
stopped.

The big man, smiling confidently, walked up to Gribardsun with his arms
out and his hands open.

Silverstein, shivering in one corner of the arena, guarded by the
juvenile expected Gribardsun to win.  Though the tribesman was bigger,
Gribardsun knew all the philosophies and techniques of twenty-first
century schools of hand-to-hand fighting.  He should be able to chop
his opponent down with karate or judo in short order.

But the Englishman at first made no attempt to use anything but brute
strength.  He grabbed the tribesman's hands in his and waited.  The big
man, grinning, pushed against his smaller opponent.  Gribardsun dug his
naked heels into the snow and pushed back.  The two slipped back and
forth and then, suddenly, Gribardsun twisted the other man's hands, and
the man dropped sideways onto the snow.  The man struck heavily.  The
spectators grunted, or said something like'Uhunga!"

His grin lost, the man got to his feet.  Gribardsun seized his hands
again and yanked downward and inward, and when the man was near enough,
brought up his knee and drove it against the chin beneath the thick
beard.

This time the man had great difficulty getting to his feet.

Gribardsun helped him up, grabbed him by the back of the neck and his
thigh and lifted him above his head.  He turned around and around,
slowly, smiling at the awed tribes people and then heaved the man, who
must have weighed at least 280 pounds, over their heads and against the
edge of the arena.  The man struck it side-on, slid down, and lay at
its bottom motionless.

The witch doctor advanced from the crowd, shaking his baton and
muttering something rhythmic.  He brought the end of the baton under
Gribardsun's nose, held it there, and then moved it from side to
side.

Gribardsun suddenly grabbed the baton, tore it from the doctor's grasp,
and sent it spinning far out into the snow.

The doctor turned gray under the paint on his face and chest.

The next step was up to the tribesmen.  Silverstein hoped they would
not try something simple and logical, such as launching every spear
they had against the two prisoners.

Nobody moved.  Everybody stared at Gribardsun.  He smiled and walked
toward the exit of the arena.

They gave way before him, and he took Silverstein's hand and led him
back to the chief's lodge.  There they sat down by the fire. Gribardsun
added wood to it despite a muttered protest from the old woman who had
not witnessed the combat outside.

The witch doctor and the chief entered.  Gribardsun looked at the fire
and ignored them.  The doctor danced around the fire, passing behind
Gribardsun and shaking his baton, which he had rescued, over the
Englishman's head.  He went around the fire widdershins twelve times
and stopped on the other side of the fire just opposite Gribardsun.  He
raised the baton to his eye and looked through the hole in its end at
Gribardsun.

Gribardsun raised his eyes and stared back at the doctor, then made an
O with his thumb and first finger and stared at the doctor through
that.

The witch doctor became pale.

"When among the Romans, out-Roman them," Gribardsun said to
Silverstein.

He stood up and walked around the fire and seized the doctor by the
nose and twisted it.

The doctor yelped with pain and flung his baton across the tent.

Gribardsun released the nose and went to the side of the tent and
picked up the baton.  It was of carved bone, and the hole in its end
was large enough so that the shaft of a spear could be thrust through
it.  Originally, in the nineteenth century, the scientists had thought
that the batons de commandement were for use in magical rites only.
Then they had decided, in the twentieth century, that the batons were
used to straighten out shafts.  The truth, as the expedition had
discovered, validated both theories.  Some batons were used as physical
tools and some as magical tools.  In a sense, the magical batons were
also shaft straighteners, since they were used by the witch doctors to
straighten or to bend the invisible shafts that bound the universe
together.  The witch doctors kept the philosophy of the use of batons
as a guild secret, transmitting the knowledge only to their successors.
Gribardsun had tried to get Glamug to tell him the arcana of his trade,
but Glamug had refused.  However, by using a highly sensitive
directional microphone, Gribardsun had eavesdropped on the school
Glamug conducted for his two sons.  He knew that the bone or wood or
ivory baton was considered to be powerful.  But a doctor who was
powerful enough to use his own fingers to form the magical
shaft-straightening hole was dreaded.  There were very few.  In fact,
Glamug had never actually seen one.  But the great doctor of tribal
history Simaumg had used only his own fingers.

Gribardsun assumed that this tribe had its equivalent of Simaumg, and
that its doctor would be aware of the dangerousness of such a man.  He
was right.  The witch doctor gave way completely.  He lowered his baton
and stared wide-eyed at Gribardsun.  Then he reversed the baton and
walked around the fire and handed it to him.  The Englishman passed his
finger through the hole in it several times and handed it back to the
doctor.

Silverstein had watched all this bewildered.  Gribardsun explained and
then told him to put on his clothes.  He doubted that anyone would
interfere.

The chief and the witch doctor conferred in low tones for a while on
the other side of the fire.  Gribardsun got tired of waiting for them
to come to a decision.  He got up and put on his own clothes and
resumed his place by the fire.  Silverstein took out his pocket
transceiver and soon got into contact with Rachel.  He described as
best he could their situation and location.

"We were their prisoners, and I suppose we still are," Drummond said.
"But, somehow, John has gotten the upper hand.  I don't know how long
he can keep it, though."

Silverstein confined himself to reporting the situation, though Rachel
tried to get him to talk about his running away.  Gribardsun gestured,
and Silverstein brought the transceiver to him.

"Don't come after us," he said to Rachel.  "You might upset the rather
delicate balance of the situation.  We'll keep in touch.  I'll report
in an hour."

"And if you don't?"  Rachel asked.

"Then you can come after us.  But if this tribe loses any more men,
it's going to perish."

That evening the chief, the doctor, the big man (subdued and somewhat
banged up), and a white-haired old man ate with the two prisoners in
the tent.  They tried to carry on a conversation with sign language.
The chief managed to get across the idea that they were not prisoners
but that the tribe could use the help of the two.  By then the firearms
had been returned to Gribardsun, who used signs to indicate that he
would use his rifle to get meat for them.

Gribardsun also tried to find out from them what had happened to cause
them to attack Silverstein, but he failed.  Silverstein stuck to his
story that they had jumped him, and he had been forced to shoot them.
Gribardsun did not say anything about his narrow escape from one of
Drummond's bullets.  But he did not return the revolver to Drummond,
nor did Drummond protest when Gribardsun dismantled the pistol and put
the parts in his pack.

He did object when the Englishman said they would spend the night in
the tent and perhaps stay for several days.

They'll murder us in our beds!"  he said.  "They must be just waiting
to catch us off guard.  My God, we killed almost half their men!"

"But through what is, to them, magical means," Gribardsun said.  "So
they expect us to reimburse them somehow.  We are under obligation to
them.  At least, that is the feeling I get.  And, in a way, we are
obligated."

"But we can't support everyone we run across!"  Silverstein protested.
"You've already got Dubhab's family on your hands.  In fact, the whole
tribe, since they've come to depend more and more on you.  Would you
add another tribe to your entourage?"

"We are intruders," Gribardsun said.  "Our presence is unnatural, if
anything that exists in nature can be said to be unnatural.  We are
here to observe and study.  But our very intrusion upsets the natural
order of things, so that we are not observing things as they would be
if we were not here.  We constitute an example of Heisenberg's
Principle of Uncertainty, but in a social sense.  We can't but affect
what we would like to see in its natural state.  So our observations
are necessarily distorted or qualified."

"I know that!"  Silverstein said impatiently.

"Yes, but the point is that if we come to these people and bring
catastrophe and ruin, then we must do something to help them.  If we
could be the ideal observers, invisible, unnoticed, then we would have
an obligation not to interfere in the slightest.  We could gather valid
scientific data about them, and if they flourished or perished, were
well or ill, tortured or the torturers, we would be the ideal
observers, the unseen camera.  But we can't be.  To make an intimate
study, we have to become intimate with them.  And that, to me, involves
a certain amount of obligation."

"I don't see why we should be obligated to people who tried to kill us
without reason."

"I don't know that they had no reason," Gribardsun said.  He turned his
large gray eyes on Silverstein, who flushed and chewed savagely on the
piece of bison meat he had just put in his mouth.

"I feel I owe some obligations," Gribardsun said.  "But I'm not
neurotic about it.  There are limits to what I owe."

"Are you talking about them or about me?"

"Both."

A little while later he stretched out on a pile of bison hides and
apparently went to sleep almost at once.  He did not cover himself with
furs, as the natives did, since his thermic ron suit kept him warm
enough.  In fact, he had to open some vents in it against getting too
warm.  The many bodies in the tent built up the temperature.

Silverstein opened his own suit at many places and took refuge beneath
three wolf-skin blankets.  But he had trouble getting to sleep.  The
stench of smoke and unwashed bodies and rotting teeth and chamber pots
and the loud snoring of the chief and his old mother and a bite now and
then from a louse kept him awake for hours.  He had no sooner fallen
asleep, or so it seemed to him, than a noise awakened him.  He sat up
and saw Gribardsun pushing the teenager blonde from him.  Evidently she
had just come over to him.  But Gribardsun was having none of her.

In the morning, Drummond commented on the incident.  Gribardsun said,
"I have no moral objection to temporary matings, and I may even have
offended her deeply.  She probably Wanted to have a child by me because
I am a powerful magician and warrior, according to her lights.  But I
would feel an additional obligation if she had a child by me.  I'm not
ready for any such thing yet."

"You mean you may be ready some day?"  Drummond queried.  "How could
that be?"

"You'll know if it happens."

They did not talk much during the rest of the day except on matters of
business.  Silverstein filmed the day's hunting, which consisted of
finding a herd of bison penned inside deep walls of snow.  Gribardsun
shot one bull to remind the tribesmen of the power of his rifle.  Then
he used spears to kill several more bulls.  After that, he called a
halt to the slaughter.  By signs he told them they shouldn't waste the
meat by killing the whole herd.  They wouldn't be able to haul all the
meat home today, and if they left carcasses behind, the wolves would
get them.  The bison were trapped in the 'yard' and most of them would
probably starve as soon as they had dug down through the snow and eaten
all the grass under it.  This was a common event; the heavy snows often
trapped the herbivores.

The next day, Silverstein asked for, and got permission, to return to
home camp.  He hesitated for a few seconds before saying, "I don't like
to go unarmed."

Gribardsun took the revolver and a box of ammunition from his pack.
"Use them with good sense," he said.

Drummond flushed and said, "Somehow, I have to clear myself.  But I
seem to get in deeper all the time.  Yet I swear I'm innocent!"

"You haven't been proved guilty yet," Gribardsun said.  "So you are
presumed innocent until then.  But that doesn't mean you're not on
trial.  The verdict depends on what you do in the future."

"This is the damnedest situation!"  Drummond said, striking his thigh
with his fist.  "Whoever would have thought, when we got into the
machine to go to 12,000 B.C."  that I would be suspected of trying to
murder you?  Or that Rachel and I would be estranged, perhaps beyond
any chance of reconciliation?  This is supposed to be a scientific
expedition, but if things continue as they have, we're going to fail!
We'll return if we return with relatively little to show.  And that
would be a disaster!  If this expedition doesn't pay off, there may
never be another.  Time travel costs too much!"

"Then I suggest that you curb your emotions and work harder,"
Gribardsun said.  "Now, I prescribe a tranquilizer for you, but not
while you're on the way home.  You'll need to be as alert as
possible.

Drummond agreed to take the pill when he got back to home camp.  He
also promised to radio the camp every five minutes so his progress
could be checked.  And he set out across the deep snow.

Silverstein did not get to the Wota'shaimg camp until late that
afternoon.  Gribardsun received from von Billmann the report that
Silverstein had been sighted.  Ten minutes later, von Billmann, very
excited, called in.  Silverstein had pulled his revolver as he walked
up to Rachel and had shot at her.  She had dropped to the ground, and
so the bullet missed her.  Drummond fired three times as she rolled
away but missed each time.  By then von Billmann had loosed six rounds
from his rifle.  One bullet struck Drummond in the left shoulder, spun
him around and tore off much of the flesh and part of the bone of the
shoulder.

Von Billmann had had a concentrated course in first aid and preventive
medicine since he was to take over as doctor if anything happened to
Gribardsun.  He had slapped pseudo-protein over the wound and then
given Drummond massive doses of P-blood from the stores brought from
the vessel.  Every person in the tribe had been blood-typed, and
Gribardsun had convinced them that they could be donors and nobody
would establish an evil control over them through their blood.  (95 %
of the tribe was A with 40% Rh negative.)

By the time Gribardsun arrived, late that evening, Drummond seemed to
be out of physical danger.  But it was evident next morning that he was
suffering from more than physical shock.  He did not recognize anybody;
he seemed to have gone back to the age of twelve.  He was a youth on
the third level of Budapest, and his mother was dying.  He spoke much
in Mandarin Chinese, which his mother had taught him.  She was half
Chinese and had been born in Lin Shiang and lived there thirteen years
before her family went to Budapest in one of those massive interchanges
of population which took place during the early part of the
twenty-first century and still occurred to a lesser extent.

"Here's another obligation for you," Rachel said as she led him into
the conical hut.

All Gribardsun could do at that time was to examine him and commend
Robert von Billmann for his medical ability.

Since Drummond could not be moved yet, Gribardsun returned in two days
to the other tribe, the Shluwg, as they called themselves.  He
supervised the care of Drummond through the transceiver at various
times of the day.  The rest of the time, he studied the Shluwg language
and also worked out a means of communicating by signs.  He succeeded in
putting across his intentions and then, leaving them to think things
over, he went back to the Wota'shaimg camp.  There he performed several
operations on Drummond; he replaced the destroyed bone with plastic so
that the shoulder would be almost as good as new.  When they returned
to their time, the plastic could be replaced with bone.

Drummond was sitting up and walking by then.  But he was still
withdrawn.

The day came when the Shluwg tribe marched into the area next to the
Wota'shaimg camp.  The Bear People were prepared for this and so,
though they were not friendly, they were not hostile either.  They did
not approve of Gribardsun's idea of amalgamation of the two groups. But
they would do as he suggested and try to get along with the
strangers.

To do this it was necessary to set up channels for communication and
certain rules of behavior.  Several people from each tribe were set to
the task of learning the language of the other.  Gribardsun led hunters
from both tribes on a great three-day hunt which brought in an immense
amount of meat.  He distributed the meat equally and then, after it was
prepared, organized a three-day feast.  There were only a few fights,
which he managed to cut short by threatening to punish both sides
severely, regardless of where the fault lay.

Seven

One fine sunny day, the two tribes set off for the trek southward.  In
three weeks, they had reached Gibraltar.  The great rock was larger
than in the twenty-first century.  Gribardsun halted the tribes long
enough to establish contact with several related tribes which lived on
or about the rock.  Specimens of their language and body tissues were
taken along with photographs.  Meat was exchanged for their tools and
weapons and their necklaces of sea shells.

The blood taken from the Gibraltar tribes was heavily B and slightly A,
with four individuals who were O. This presented a puzzling picture.
The answer, if it would ever be found, would probably come after all
data was brought back to the twenty-first century.

The two tribes marched on across the land bridge which, at that time,
was over six miles wide.  They entered North Africa and continued along
the coast eastward.  The coast was about four to five hundred feet
below the level of the Mediterranean as the twenty-first century knew
it.  The group moved slowly, because the three scientists were busy
taking specimens and measurements.  As the scientific collection
increased, more people had to be detailed to carry the growing bulk of
information.  And that meant that the work of the bearers had to be
parceled out among the others.  As a result, Gribardsun had to spend
more time hunting with the rifle to feed the mob.  But he also had to
devote extra time to the scientific work, since Silverstein was
incapable of performing his duties.

The total range of duties kept Gribardsun working from dawn or before
until far past supper.  But he was an excellent administrator, in that
he knew the value of letting his inferiors share the burden.

"I learned that in His Majesty's Service," he told Rachel.

"His?  But... "I meant Her Majesty's, of course."

"Even so," Rachel said, 'that would make you born..."

It was just a matter of speaking," he said.  "One of the archaic
phrases of which I'm so fond.  I meant, in the government service, of
course.  But I learned that if you don't want to kill yourself with
work and worry, you delegate responsibility."

"You should be exhausted," she said.  "But you took fresh as ever.  I'm
the one who's dying of overwork and lack of sleep, and yet my duties
are as nothing compared to yours."

"You're worried about Drummond."

"Yes.  It's all over between us.  And he may even have tried to well,
he did try to kill me, and I believe he tried to kill you.  But he was
mentally ill.  He couldn't help himself.  I don't hate him.  I just
don't love him any more.  Yet, I feel responsible for him.  Sorry for
him, I suppose.  I can understand him.  I sometimes feel that I'm going
insane myself.  I just can't get a strong grip on reality.  If this is
reality.  It all seems so dreamlike and too often nightmarish.
Sometimes I think I'll scream if I don't see something familiar.  I
know it's blasphemy, from a scientific viewpoint, but I wish that we
could return to our time tomorrow.  I'd chuck all that has to be
learned for a chance to climb aboard and know that in a few minutes I'd
be back in the twenty-first century."

"This reaction this temporal shock is just as valuable a datum as
anything we'll bring back," he said.  "I hope it won't cause time
travel to be abandoned.  I doubt it, since only one of us is very much
incapacitated, and we can't prove that that happened because of
temporal dislocation.  In any event, you can be sure that those chosen
for future expeditions will be much more deeply tested.  But," he
added, smiling, 'it will be too late for anybody on this expedition."

"Why do you smile?"

"I'll tell you some day."

The two tribes moved on along the coast of Morocco.  Though it was
cold, often below freezing, and snow fell, the climate was not as
rigorous as in Iberia.  They marched more swiftly, but their halts were
longer, since the three scientists had enough to do to keep them in
each area for six months.  They took thousands of photographs, made
maps of the coastal areas, took samples of the soil and the water and
specimens of flora and fauna, from local bacteria and amoeba and
earthworms up to the elephants.  They could not take the elephant
bodies with them, of course, but Gribardsun and Rachel Silverstein did
random dissections and preserved tissue slides.  They made Carbon-14
and xenon argon datings on the spot with their equipment.  They fished
and then studied specimens before giving them over to the cooks.

The tribes living on the coast were generally small and lived by
hunting and fishing.  Rivers ran through the Sahara and emptied into
the western half of the Mediterranean.  The river mouths were plentiful
with fish and seal and porpoise, and inland were the elephants and
rhinoceroses, antelope and deer and goat, horses, aurochs, and even
bison.  There were also lions and bears and leopards.  Although the
great snow leopards existed in France and Iberia, Gribardsun had never
seen one in those regions.  But he had not been in Africa more than a
week before he glimpsed three at a distance.

The natives were larger than the Arab-Berber type of the modern era but
somewhat smaller, thinner-boned and darker than the modern Europeans.
They were also longer-headed and tended toward aquiline faces.  So far,
no Negroes had been encountered nor had any of the Africans ever heard
of black men.

"It's too late, even in 12,000 B.C."  to determine the origin of the
Negro race," Gribardsun said.  "I don't suppose we'll ever know if it's
true that they arose somewhere in southern Asia and then migrated to
Africa and Austronesia and were killed off or absorbed on the Asiatic
mainland.  Or if they originated in Africa and then, somehow, some
migrated to New Guinea and Melanesia, leaving damn few traces along the
trail.  Even so, we might learn something if we could explore East
Africa now and learn what types are living there.  I suspect there'd be
some Caucasoid and Capsoid types and perhaps some Negritos."

"You surely aren't thinking of taking us down there?"  Rachel said.

"I would object," von Billmann said.  "That would take us entirely too
far from the vessel; it would definitely imperil the expedition.
Moreover, if we're going to roam far and wide, we should be doing it in
central Europe, preferably somewhere between the Elbe and Vistula.  We
should be ascertaining whether proto-Indo-Hittite speech exists there,
or ..."

Gribardsun smiled but shook his head.  "You're the greatest linguist of
the twenty-first century, Robert, and you have a very high
intelligence.  But I have to keep reminding you that those rivers are
buried under vast masses of ice.  If you ever did find your
proto-I-H-speakers, it would be somewhere to the south.  Maybe in
Italy.  Or in France, a few miles from where the vessel emerged.  Or
maybe on this coast, a few miles ahead of us.  Or behind us, a few
miles inland."

Von Billmann laughed, but his face was red.  "I know," he said.  "But
that's my blind spot.  My brain slips a cog every time I think of my
love.  I know that glaciers cover that area, but I'm so eager to locate
my language, my beloved language, that I forgot.  But I have a hunch,
an intuition, worthless perhaps and only the expression of a wish, that
my speakers are living not too far to the south of the glaciers,
perhaps in Czechoslovakia."

"Next year, if circumstances permit, we'll go.  to Czechoslovakia,"
Gribardsun said.  "We have to study the edges of the glaciers, anyway.
And if we can go to North Africa, we can certainly go to central
Europe."

Von Billmann had never looked so happy.

The tribes moved on slowly eastward.  By now they could communicate
fairly well with signs and a mixture of each other's vocabulary.  The
structure of the two languages was dissimilar, and each contained
sounds difficult for a non natal speaker to master.  The result was the
gradual building up of a pidgin.  It contained sounds that both the
Wota'shaimg and the Shluwg could pronounce, and vocabulary items which
the two tribes had agreed to accept, though the agreement was
apparently entirely unconscious.  The structure of the pidgin tended
more toward that of the Wota'shaimg, since they were the dominant
tribe.  But it was considerably simplified, and before a year was up,
its structure had been determined.  Von Billmann was ecstatic at being
present at the birth of a new language.  He recorded it as it developed
and, in fact, since he knew more about pidgins and synthetic and
artificial languages than anybody in this or any other time, he played
a big part in the development of this one.  He knew what the ideal
language should be, and he used his influence to shape the pidgin.

"If the two tribes stay together," he said, 'they may abandon their own
language and substitute the pidgin.  That would be the most economical
and logical course."

Though the two tribes were of somewhat different physical type, and
their way of looking at the universe differed greatly in many respects,
they shared many similar customs.  Their attitudes toward marriage and
their sexual habits were near identical, their methods of hunting were
identical, and their governmental systems were much alike.  They ate
practically the same foods; the tab us of each were few, and neither
objected to the other tribe eating its tabu animal

Then Tkant, the big man whom Gribardsun had defeated in the snow arena,
decided that he could provide for two families.  So he asked for, and
got, Neliska, Dubhab's daughter, as his second wife.  Gribardsun, as
her protector, gave her away.  He had one less obligation, though
Neliska had asked him, before she accepted Tkant, if he intended to
marry her.  Gribardsun hesitated and then said that he thought it best
if she married Tkant.

Laminak, Neliska's sister, was happy at this decision.  She had just
gone through her rites of passage and so was, theoretically, eligible
at the age of twelve for marriage.  In practice, the young females did
not marry until they were fourteen; some not until they were sixteen.
Most of the early married did not bear children until they were
eighteen or even older.  This was not because of any method of birth
control; the women did not become fertile until relatively late.

On the other hand, some of the tribes along the coast had many females
who bore children at the age of twelve.  The rate of death at
childbirth was higher for both infant and mother in these tribes.

The two tribes walked eastward, encountering peoples who either fled or
were easily awed by the display of Very lights or a few shots fired
over their heads.  No lives were lost on either side in these
encounters, and after Gribardsun shot a rhinoceros or two or some wild
cattle for the natives, a peaceful if sometimes uneasy relationship was
established.

About the middle of January, the group arrived in what would be,
someday, Tunisia.  Actually, they were in an area that would be
underwater off the Tunisian coast in the modern age, but the scientists
made a number of treks from their base camp into the interior.  Here
the snows lay not too deeply on the winter grass and on top of the many
trees.  A broad river wound through the land and poured down into the
Mediterranean.  Gribardsun followed its course for two hundred miles
before reluctantly turning back.

"I get the same joy from seeing the vast herds of many different types
of animals and the great predators that feed on them as Robert does
when he finds a new language," he said to Rachel.  "This is the way a
world should be.  Few human beings, many animals, plenty of water and
grass.  I would like this even better if there were many more trees,
but I know that these do exist further south.  The air is pure, and
nature works unhindered by man."

"I long for the day when I can return home," she said.  "But you sound
as if you dread it."

"Far from it," he said.  "I look forward with joy to the day that the
vessel returns."

That was only one of the many puzzling statements he made.  Rachel did
not ask him what he meant.  By now she knew that he just would not
reply.

After a month and a half at their Tunisian camp, Gribardsun gave the
word to march again.  They set off toward Sicily.  The stealing of
water by the great northern glaciers had not only resulted in a land
bridge across what would be the Straits of Gibraltar.  There was
another, and far greater, land bridge between Italy, Sicily, Tunisia,
and part of Libya.  The Mediterranean was, at this time, two smaller
seas separated by the extension of Italy.

The tribes moved on the western coast of the bridge with the hills high
on their right.  And the sixth day out, Drummond found their first
human fossil skull.

Apparently, though he was still living in the age of twelve, he had not
forgotten everything he had learned since then.  He was out walking
near the camp, accompanied by Laminak and a juvenile male for
protection, when he saw a piece of the skull sticking out of a layer of
limestone halfway up a hill.

He told von Billmann of it.  He would not speak to Rachel or John then
another indication that he was not entirely stuck at an early age.
Robert verified the find and told the other two scientists.  They spent
a week delicately digging out the skull and some pieces of skeleton and
looking for other fossils.

The study of the stratum and the bones, and the gaseous content and
decay of the rocks, indicated that the skull belonged to a young man
who had lived about 200,000 B.C."  during the Third Glacial.  His
massive features indicated a human intermediate between Heidelberg and
Neanderthal man.  No tools were found in conjunction with the fossil.

The descendant of Homo heidelbergensis and the ancestor of Homo
neanderthalensis was dubbed Homo Silverstein.

Though every member of the tribe was alerted to evidence of fossils,
and some fossil animals and plants were found, no more human fossils
were seen.

The land bridge was crossed and the safari was traveling on the west
coast of Sicily, or, rather, on land that would be hundreds of feet
below the twenty-first century Sicilian beaches.  Occasionally, the
scientists went to the mountains inland to make observations and
collect specimens.

The next bridge was between Sicily and Italy.  When they arrived at the
mouth of the Tiber, they went up the river valley to the site of
Rome-to-be.  A small tribe of particularly brutish people lived there.
They were short and squat and had skeletal characteristics which
indicated a mixing with Neanderthals at some time in the past.  They
wore no clothes and daubed themselves with mud to keep themselves warm
in the winter.  Their weapons and tools were far too primitive for even
12,000 B.C."  and they practiced cannibalism.

Farther north was another group which was a physical double of the
pre-Romans.  But these were far more advanced in technology and wore
fur clothing skillfully sewn together and used fine stone, wood, and
bone tools and weapons.  Their language was related to that of the
Tiber people.

Gribardsun had a theory that was, he admitted, mystical to some extent,
and a modification of Jung's.  He believed that each group of people
had its own particular soul or collective psyche.  The factors creating
this soul were unconscious but deliberate.  That is, the collective
mind determined, in some as yet un analyzable manner, to fashion itself
into a mode belligerent or pacifist, lazy or busy, poetic or practical,
progressive or static or regressive.  Some collective souls yearned for
a place by the gods; others, by swine.

The two groups they had just left were examples of the difference of
collective psyches in two similar groups.  Both had picked up some
Neanderthal genes, and isolation from Homo sapiens had enabled them to
retain these genes.  It was possible that the two had only recently
been one, and that the split had taken place only a few generations
before.  But one seemed to be deliberately brutish; the other, quite
human.

"I don't think your colleagues at the University of Greater Europe
would accept that theory," von Billmann said.

"I do not care.  It's only a theory, anyway, with no way to prove it,
and I don't intend to waste time trying to do so," Gribardsun said.

By early spring, they had entered that prong of land which took in the
islands of Elba, Corsica, and Sardinia.  These comprised one land mass
connected with Italy and covered with firs and pines and filled with
game, including elephants, cave bear and lions.  Some of the tribes had
Negroid skeletal traits, but they were definitely Caucasoid.  Their
hair was curly, but only loosely so, and their lips, though full, were
not overly everted.  There was a small minority of blonds among them.

By late April, the safari crossed the border-to-be between Italy and
France.  Gribardsun, having determined the border by astronomical and
geodesic observations, was the first to walk across the imaginary line.
Humming the Marseillaise, he strode along.  His thick black hair was
cut short straight across his forehead; the rest swinging
shoulder-length.  His face was shaven; he had not yet overcome his
dislike of beards.  He wore a yellow-brown lion-skin cape and a red
deer loincloth and brown bearskin boots.  The rifle was slung over his
shoulder, and he carried a flint-tipped spear in one hand.  His big
steel hunting knife was in a sheath at his leopard-skin belt.

Behind him came Glamug, holding high at the end of a wooden pole a
cave-bear skull.  His face and body were painted with bright symbols,
and he was chanting a protective ritual.  Behind him came the chiefs
and chief warriors of both tribes in their pecking order and then the
Wota'shaimg.  Behind them was the standard bearer of the Shluwg,
holding on a pole a wildcat skull, and after him his tribe.  The
drummers and fluters and whistlers of both tribes were playing their
own 'national' anthems, and their people were singing, respectively,
the Song of the Father Bear and the Song of the Great Wildcat Mother.
The only ones whose musical sensibilities were offended were the time
travelers.

"Lafayette, we are here!"  shouted Gribardsun in French.  He seemed to
be unusually exuberant that day.  They had covered over 3,600 miles in
nine months by taking their time at some places and making long forced
marches between others.  Gribardsun would have liked to stop off for
about two weeks to rest at their starting point, the overhang in the
Vezere River valley.  After their strength was restored, they could go
northwestward across France and cross the land bridge into England,
following the Thames, which ran across the bridge and into Europe.

But when, at the end of their two-weeks' rest, he suggested this plan,
he found that the tribes refused to go.  They had had enough of
wandering.  Now they wanted to settle down for the summer, hunt
animals, pick berries, dig roots, tan skins, fish in the rivers for
salmon, hold feasts, repair tents, and make new ones.

The chiefs and the doctors looked apprehensive when they said no to
Gribardsun.  But he did not threaten or shoot off the thunder stick  He
replied, smiling, that he understood how very weary they must be and
that they had to prepare for the winter in the short time they had.  He
thanked them for the great endurance and forbearance they had shown in
following him around the great waters.  It was true that he had shown
them many strange lands and peoples and thus broadened their outlook
and their knowledge.  And he had strengthened them by bringing about
the fusion of the two tribes.  Nevertheless, they had shown much
courage and patience in this great task, and he thanked them.

But he and his colleagues had their work, too.  They would leave for a
good part of the summer.  But they would be back.  And he would expect
the tribes to be on their best behavior, as they were when he was
present.  The two tribes must continue to submit any disputes to the
council, composed of the elders of each tribe.  And they must continue
to improve their mutual language, Galush.  And they must continue to
cooperate in every respect.  When he came back he would ask how well
the two tribes had behaved toward each other and also among
themselves.

If, however, any individuals of either group wished to volunteer to go
along with Gribardsun, then they must be allowed to go.  He would
overrule the tribal elders in this single matter.  He needed carriers
for the specimens that would be collected.

A number of juveniles volunteered, but their fathers overruled them.
They could not be spared.  Their absence would impose great hardships
on their families.

Gribardsun had to admit that the fathers were right.  In this primitive
economy, every able hand must be used to its fullest ability.

The juveniles were disappointed, since they would much rather be
roaming around the country than working day and night at home under the
strict supervision of father in particular and the tribe in general.

"Very well," John Gribardsun said.  I'll make the trip by myself.  I
can do it three times as fast by myself.  I'll make a flying survey of
England as far north as the edge of the glaciers.  I think I can do it
in four weeks."

Von Billmann said, "Are you running most of the way?"

"Practically," Gribardsun said.  "I'll be carrying the rifle and
ammunition and a camera and film and some recording balls.  I'll live
off the country, eat only twice a day, and use every bit of daylight to
travel."

"It's about six hundred miles from here to the southern edge of the
glacier in England as the crow flies," von Billmann said.  "Twelve
hundred miles round trip.  And you'll probably cover three hundred or
so miles in England itself.  To get back here in a month, you'll have
to average about fifty miles a day."

"I may take a little longer than a month," the Englishman said.

"You won't have any thick woods to slow you up," Rachel said.  "But
even so..."

The night before he was to leave, the four sat around a fire in front
of their huts.  Most of the tribes people had gone to bed, filled with
meat and berries and boiled greens they had devoured during the feast
to celebrate Gribardsun's departure.  Many had cried and embraced him,
saying that they would miss him very much and hoping that evil spirits
or bad animals would not get him.  Their grief seemed genuine enough,
but Gribardsun remarked later that a sense of relief underlay the
sorrow.  With him gone, they would be able to get back to a more normal
or at least a less tense life.  Having a demigod around was not
conducive to relaxation or comfort.

"I've said that I object to your going off on your own, and I protest
again," Rachel said.  "You're the one who keeps everybody in line here.
Our authority may not be up to keeping the peace between the two
tribes.  And what if one of us falls sick?  You're the doctor.  You
won't be here to treat us.  If something should happen to you and you
must admit that the chances are high we would have no way of knowing
where you are.  We couldn't even go looking for you; it would
jeopardize the expedition itself.  You aren't even taking along a
radio."

"As the head of this expedition, I make the decisions," John said.
"Everything we do here is chancy.  I believe that a survey of
conditions in England will be a valuable addition to our data and so
the trip is justified.  Besides," he added with a smile, "I want to see
what jolly old England looks like now.  You can't call it a tight
little island, of course, since it's just part of a huge land mass
extending as far as Iceland.  But I am curious to see what the Thames
and the site of London-to-be look like.  And what my ancestral estates
in Derbyshire and Yorkshire look like."

At dawn, Gribardsun stepped out from his hut.  He wore a wolf-skin vest
and deerskin loincloth and his bearskin boots.  He carried a pack on
his back containing ammunition and his meager scientific and medical
equipment, several containers of dehydrated fruit juice and
concentrated protein, a suit and a tent of thermic ron (though it was
summer it would be cold near the ice fields of England), and a pair of
binoculars.  He was not even taking shaving equipment, though he could
have shaved with the edge of his hunting knife.  He was growing a beard
on this trip.

Laminak was wailing with the scientists.  She threw her arms around him
and wept, and he kissed her and told her not to grieve.  Rachel looked
sour.  She had tried to overcome her irrational feelings of jealousy,
but she could not endure the child.  Gribardsun might seem amused by
Laminak's devotion, but she could not get rid of the idea that he was
just waiting for her to become a little older.  Gribardsun thought so
much of her, her intelligence was very high, she was sensitive,
perceptive, and open-hearted, and showed signs of being a beauty.
Before it would be time for the travelers to return, she would be
fifteen, and Gribardsun might take her back with him.  She believed
this despite his protests that that could never happen.

Drummond Silverstein said goodbye to Gribardsun and then burst into
tears.  He had become very much attached to the Englishman, partly
because they spent an hour almost every day in therapy.  Gribardsun was
using a combination of drugs and hypnotism to break through the wall of
time that Drummond had erected inside himself.  But he had had little
success.  However, Drummond had become very dependent on him.

"If I thought that my leaving would injure him, I might stay,"
Gribardsun said.  "But the therapy has not been spectacularly
successful, so it won't be upset with my absence.  But I want you two
to watch him closely for signs of improvement or regression.  You have
my instructions concerning him."

Ten minutes later, he was out of sight.  He left at a trot, which he
said he could keep up all day.  Except in the roughest terrain, he
expected to average about fifty miles a day.

The days passed.  The summer was hot but short, and the work for both
the scientists and the tribes people was hard.  Rachel trained Drummond
to help her in her fields of botany, zoology, and genetics, but had to
suppress an ever present irritation with him.  She tended to regard him
as mentally retarded, whereas he was actually a very bright
twelve-year-old.  He learned swiftly, but he did make mistakes, and she
was sharp with him when these occurred.  Nor did she feel sympathetic
when he now and then called her 'mother."  She was, in fact, furious.

Von Billmann showed signs of discontent.  More and more he complained
about the low chances of ever getting to Czechoslovakia.

"The speakers of proto-Indo-Hittite must be located and their language
recorded," he said.  "And doing this will take time.  We should be
traveling there right now.  But, instead, John Gribardsun is visiting
that barren piece of land, England.  I doubt that he'll find a single
human being there."

"That's not what he's looking for," she said.  "You know he's making a
geological and meteorological survey."

"We should have brought along a small plane," he said peevishly.  "We
could have covered hundreds of miles, saved months of travel time.  I
could be in Czechoslovakia right now."

She had known von Billmann for many years before the expedition and had
never once seen him in a bad humor.  Perhaps he was being affected by
temporal dislocation.  Though he had been more resistant than she or
her husband, he was succumbing now.  And she, instead of getting
better, was feeling less and less attached to reality.  She and von
Billmann were weakening, she was sure, because their pillar of
stability was gone.  As long as Gribardsun was around, reality seemed
more solid.  He radiated strength and assurance.

Eight

A month passed.  The hunters brought in hares, lemmings, marmots,
voles, grouse, foxes, wolves, ibex, reindeer, horses, musk oxen,
aurochs, bison, rhinoceroses, and mammoths.  The fishermen brought in
salmon and fresh-water mussels.  The women brought in berries and
tubers and greens of various kinds.  Meat and fish were smoked and
dried.  Tubers were dried or ground into a powder.  Skins were tanned,
cut, and sewn.  An old man (about sixty) died.  Ten babies were born,
four of whom died at birth.  Three mothers died.  A hunter came too
close to a mammoth which had fallen into a trap and was lifted up and
dashed to death by the huge beast's trunk.  A youth fell off a cliff
while hunting ibex, broke his back, and was eaten by cave hyenas before
his companions could get to him.  A man savagely beat his wife when he
found her with another man behind a large boulder.  She recovered but
lost numerous teeth and an eye.

Casualties were normally high among these people, but this month they
were unusually high, frighteningly so to the tribes-people.  They
blamed Gribardsun's absence for the evil things happening to them.

When thirty days had passed, Rachel and von Billmann began to look for
Gribardsun.  Every day thereafter they expected, or at least hoped, to
see his tall, long-legged, broad-shouldered figure and handsome face
appear down the valley.  But two weeks went by, and they started to
worry.  They knew that he was not conforming to a timetable, and that
he might have run across many interesting phenomena to detain him.  But
he was a man of his word, and if he said he would be back in a month,
he would try to keep reasonably close to that time.

The day of the seventh week after his departure, Rachel was on a
herpetological field trip, about five miles from the camp, with
Drummond.  She had taken films at long range of a field where vipers
lived.  Having been fortunate to photograph a viper in the act of
swallowing a young lemming, she went into the area to catch the snake.
She found the hole into which it had disappeared and she and Drummond
began digging into it.  After fifteen minutes of hard work with the
shovel, she exposed the snake sleeping in the burrow with its middle
swollen with the lemming.  She lifted it and dropped it into a bag.

And then she dropped bag and snake as Drummond yelled behind her.

She whirled and saw him rigid and pointing at a larger viper poised to
strike only a foot away.

"Stand still!"  she said.  "And be quiet!  I'll get him!"

She withdrew her pistol slowly from her holster, but Drummond yelled
again and jumped away as the upper part of the snake's body swayed back
and forth.  The snake flashed forward at the sudden movement, and
Rachel shrieked.  She thought that the snake had struck Drummond.

Her revolver missed the viper with the first two shots, but the third
blew its backbone apart just behind the head.

Drummond remained frozen and gray.

"Did it bite you?"  she asked.  She reached into the bag she wore
suspended from her belt.  It held anti-venom drugs, but the effect
depended on quick injection.

"I don't think so," he said finally, staring down at his leg.  "It
struck me, but only with the tip of its snout, I think.  I was going
away from it when it did hit."

He suddenly sat down and covered his face with his hands.  Rachel got
down on her knees and rolled up his pants leg.  She could find no
bite.

"You're all right," she said.

"Where exactly am I?"  His eyes looked at her bewildered through his
fingers.

She knew then, without being told, what had happened.

"I remember shooting at you," he said.  "My God, what happened?  Where
are we?"

By the time they had returned to camp, he knew everything.  But it was
all hearsay to him.  He remembered nothing from the moment he had tried
to kill her.

"And the old snake-pit treatment brought me back," he said.  "In one
way I wish it hadn't.  But of course I wouldn't want to remain a child
forever.  I wonder why I got stuck at that age?  It doesn't matter, I
can find out when I get back to our time.  If we ever do..."

He began to weep, saying as he regained control, "My God, what have I
done?  What's happened to me?  To us?"

She did not reply for a while, and then she said, "Whatever it is, it's
something that brought out in us what already existed.  It didn't
originate anything."

"I can't believe that these psychological changes are brought about
just by the shock of time dislocation," he said.  "I wonder if there
aren't some subtle somatic effects caused by time travel.  Something
that causes an electrochemical imbalance."

"That is something that will be determined by the medics when we get
back," she said.  "Unless, of course, the trip back restores our
balance."

She started to say something, shut her mouth, then put out her hand to
stop him.

"John is gone," she said, 'and it's possible he may never return.  I
can't help feeling that something bad has happened to him.  But if he
does return, then what?  Are we going to go through the same thing?  Do
I have to be afraid that you'll be shooting at us?"

"I suppose it's all over between us, no matter what I do from now on,"
he said.

"Yes, I won't lie, even if I am afraid of you," she said.  "I'm getting
a divorce as soon as we get out of quarantine."

"And then you and Gribardsun will be getting married?"

She laughed and said, "Oh, yes!  Right away!  You fool!  He doesn't
love me!  I asked him, and he said no!"

"And you two weren't cheating on me?  Or intending to?"

"This is the twenty-first century!"  she said.

"No, it isn't.  It's the hundred and twentieth B.C. You didn't answer
my question."

"No, we weren't cheating on you.  You know I wouldn't deceive you; I'd
tell you what I was doing or what I intended to do.  And John would
never stoop to do anything behind a person's back.  You should know him
better than that!  Can you actually conceive of him doing anything base
or sneaky?"

"Noble John.  Nature's aristocrat!"

They were silent.  He started toward the camp again but stopped after a
few steps.

"I swore I wouldn't ever say anything about this until we returned. But
I feel I must tell you now.  Only you will have to promise me you won't
tell Robert or Gribardsun."

"How can I do that if it turns out that what you're going to tell me
may hurt John if I keep silent?"

He shrugged and said, "Unless you promise not to tell anyone, I won't
tell you."

Rachel looked steadily at him as if she were trying to tunnel straight
into his mind, into the chamber where the secret hid.  Then she said,
"All right.  I promise."

"You mean it?"

"Have I ever lied to you?"

"I don't think so," he said.

He licked his lips.

"Well, here goes.  The day before our quarantine, de Long-nors called
me and asked if he could talk to me in private.  You were gone, so I
said yes.  He was at our apartment in ten minutes, and after making
sure the place wasn't bugged, and with me wondering what was going on,
he told me everything he knew and suspected about Gribardsun."

"Naturally he'd be angry with John."

"There was more to it than that.  You see, he'd talked with Moishe, not
too long before Moishe died.  Moishe was already sick by then, and he
knew he was going to die.  He called in de Longnors, who at that time
was to be head of our expedition.  He told de Longnors a strange tale,
one which de Longnors found difficult to believe.  Moishe said that
thirty years before, in 2038, when he was still working on his theory
of time mechanics, he was approached by Gribardsun.  At that time
almost no one knew what Moishe was working on and those who did thought
he was a crackpot.  In fact, Moishe almost lost his position as an
instructor in physics at the University of Greater Europe because his
superiors thought he was an imbecile or psychotic.  Or both.

"But the pressure from them suddenly and inexplicably eased off.  And
Moishe was given the go-ahead.  Not only that; he was granted leave
from his teaching duties and given more computer facilities.

"Moishe said that this took place almost immediately after he had
explained to Gribardsun what he was doing.  Apparently Gribardsun had a
grasp of Moishe's theory that no one else had at that time.  Moishe
said it wasn't because Gribardsun was such a great mathematician.  But
he seemed to have an almost intuitive comprehension.  As if he spoke or
thought in a language that had the same structure as Moishe's
mathematics.  Moishe couldn't explain what his impressions of
Gribardsun were, but he felt a repressed force and something slightly
un human not inhuman in him.  As if the man had a somewhat non-Homo
sapiens Weltanschauung.

"Whatever Gribardsun was, he wanted Moishe to go full jets ahead.  And
Moishe was given everything he asked for.  At the time he did not
connect the Englishman's visit with what followed.  Gribardsun had not
promised anything.  But later, Moishe made a few investigations after
he became suspicious, that is; he could not prove it, but he suspected
that Gribardsun had somehow pulled strings to get the project going.
All of this was thirty years before construction on the vessel had
started.  Twenty-four years before the final project was approved."

"Moishe was always a very busy man.  But he got several men interested
in Gribardsun, men in the International Criminal Agency who, in the
event, took a long time to find out little.  But their findings were
significant, though improvable.  Mostly, they concluded that something
was rotten, not in Denmark, but in England and in Time.  And in
Africa.

"By using the facilities of the World Reference Bank, they learned that
Gribardsun had been interested for a long time in trying to analyze the
structure of Time.  Moreover, so had his father.  Now, our John
Gribardsun was born in Derbyshire in 2020, which makes him fifty years
old fifty-one by now.  He looks as if he's thirty, which is no miracle
in this day of rejuvenation drugs.  His father, who looked exactly like
him, was born in 1980, and disappeared while sailing off the coast of
Kenya.  Apparently not much was known about his father.  Though an
English duke, he spent most of his life in East Africa."

"His father was born in vague circumstances in West Africa exact
location not known raised in indeterminate circumstances in West
Africa, and came into his ducal title only after some shenanigans on
the part of a relative, who tried to bilk him out of it.  This man
lived most of his life in Africa and then disappeared in 1970,
whereupon his grandson became Duke Gribardsun of Pemberley.  But the
grandfather was born in 1872."

Rachel said, "What about it?  What about any of this stuff?  What's the
point?"

"To start with, from John Gribardsun born in 1872, every Duke of
Gribardsun spent most of his life in Africa.  And though they served
their country in war, they took no other part in public life. Moreover,
their source of income was very shadowy.  They were suspected of having
a gold mine somewhere in Central Africa, and the original duke and his
descendants had much trouble if rumors could be believed with criminals
determined to find that mine.  And if you think that is a fairy tale,
let me tell you that every once in a while an eruption of gold onto the
black market could be traced back to Africa.  But never directly to the
doorstep of the Gribardsuns.  Money was abandoned everywhere in the
early twenties, if you'll remember.  The economy of abundance was
adopted worldwide.  And at the same time the British peerage was
abolished.  So the Gribardsuns lost both title and their secret wealth
at the same time.  But our John went into the professions.  He was a
doctor and also an administrator of the World Reference Bank.  He had
access to the administrative records, and to the men who kept them,
both as their doctor and as their supervisor.  A strange double career,
don't you think?  Especially in these days, when no man has to work if
he doesn't care to.  Yet Gribardsun had two professions.  And during
his long and frequent vacations, he spent much time on the Inner Kenyan
Sanctuary and the Ugandan Preserve.  It was there he did his work for
his MQA thesis on physical anthropology.  And it was out of there, if
you can believe the findings of the ICA, that some strange tales began
coming all about John Gribardsun: his great strength, his ability to
live off the jungle, his singular ability to get along with animals. 
There were even rumors that he was ageless. The natives of the
sanctuary and the preserve spoke of that.  They claimed that he was
several hundred years old and been given a magic potion when he was
very young by a native witch doctor.  These stories were discounted, of
course.  But then ICA came ac ross some disquieting or maybe just
puzzling things when they were checking out the World Reference Bank. 
There were indications but nothing that could be proved that the
records had been tampered with."

"What in the world are you driving at?"  Rachel said.  But her eyes
were wide, her skin pale, and a pulse beat in the hollow of her neck.

"Well, the ICA men were thorough, and very well trained, but not what
you might call imaginative.  They put together a picture and then
refused to believe it.  They did, however, check out the fingerprints,
photographs, and biographical data of the John Gribardsun born in 1872
against each of his descendants.  They did so, they said, as a matter
of routine, but they were looking for something which I don't think
they expressed even to each other.

"However, his descendants, though they looked much like him, had
different fingerprints.  And though the original John never had retinal
or ear or brain wave prints, his descendants did.  And theirs were
unique.  But then, false records can be made.  And the lives of the
later Gribardsuns, which should have been much more thoroughly
documented and detailed, were almost as shadowy as that of the man born
in 1872.  The Gribardsuns did not even go to public school; they all
had private tutors."

"Curiouser and curiouser," Rachel said, but she did not look as if she
were mocking him.

"But the thorough investigation into our John turned up nothing that
could be used against him.  And so the investigation was dropped.  But
then the first experiments with time travel were made.  And that
strange block which extended from our time back to around 1870 was
discovered.  Of all the theories advanced and there were some wild ones
the wildest was, I believe, the true one.  You remember my commenting
on it last year when we were talking about the early experiments?
Perrault said that perhaps someone who had been born in the late
seventies still lived.  And the structure of Time was such that no
object or person could be sent back to a time when anybody living then
was still living in our time.  He was scoffed at, of course, because
that would mean that somewhere in the world was a man two hundred and
some years old."

She nodded and said, "I know.  But with the drugs and techniques we now
have, some day people will live as long as that longer and yet be
young."

"Yes, but they didn't have those drugs in the nineteenth or twentieth
century."

"Somebody might have.  Some backwoods witch doctor perhaps.  You can't
say it's beyond the bounds of possibility."

He shook his head and hit his temple with the butt of his palm.

"When Moishe heard this theory of Perrault's, he was the only scientist
who didn't pooh-pooh it.  At least, he made no statement whatever on
it.  But that 1872 date rang the gong, you might say.  He began
thinking about Gribardsun.  Yet he didn't want to do anything to
antagonize the man.  Gribardsun, he was sure, was responsible for time
travel.  He didn't originate the theory or work out the physical
techniques, of course.  But if it hadn't been for him, Moishe could
never have gotten any place.  He was certain of that though, again, he
couldn't prove it.

"But what was Gribardsun's motive?  If Gribardsun did have the elixir a
hundred years or so before anybody eke, why was he so interested in
time travel, why had he worked so hard to bring it about?  Especially
when it looked as if he wasn't going to enjoy its benefits.  He was
only sixth in priority, and he had only gotten that high in some
unaccountable manner.

"And then, suddenly, he was second.  One thing after another had
happened to those in line ahead of him.  Sickness, a sudden loss of
interest or of courage.  One man resigned without giving any reasons
and took off for Tahiti.  Very mysterious.

"Moishe was very sick by this time then.  He..."

"Are you suggesting that Gribardsun poisoned him, too?"  Rachel said.

"No.  Moishe was never intended to go on the expedition.  He was too
old and besides, he didn't have the qualifications.  No, he got one of
the rare incurable cancers as you know and he was dying.  He hoped he'd
live long enough to see the expedition off.  It was his greatest wish,
and he never got it.  Moses before the Promised Land, he used to say,
when he felt well enough to joke.  Which wasn't often.  But Gribardsun
worried him.  He couldn't see what sinister motive the man had, if his
motive was sinister.  Then de Longnors disappeared, and Moishe was
certain that Gribardsun was responsible.  But Moishe didn't have long
to live, and he did owe Gribardsun a great debt, and he did not want to
make accusations which would result in the expedition being held up.  A
few days' delay would mean he'd die before the launching.  As it turned
out, he did die before the launching.  Anyway, he told me the story.
And he asked me not to tell anybody.  But I was to keep an eye on
Gribardsun, and, after I returned, if I felt it was justified, I was to
reveal the whole story.  Of course I promised, but I felt like a fool.
The whole thing was so fantastic.  Or so I thought then.  Now I don't
think so at all.  And when I get back..."

"You still have nothing to tell," she said.  "Moreover, you have been
mentally sick, and your story would be hushed up to protect you more
than John."

"Do you mean that you think it's all nonsense?"

"No, I don't.  I think that what you and Moishe suspected is true.  But
what can any of us do about it?  Besides, I can't believe that John
would do anything dishonest or in any way evil."

"That's because you're still in love with him!"

"Probably."

Drummond clamped his teeth tightly and balled his hands.

Strange sounds came from beneath his teeth.

Rachel said, "Drummond!  Don't!  I can't help it!  Please don't get
sick again!  You have to face reality!"

He opened his fists and released the tension on his jaws and breathed
out heavily.  He said, "All right.  I can face it.  But I wish..."

"There's Robert!"  she said.  "He looks worried.  I wonder if
anything's happened to John!"

She ran toward him.  Von Billmann said, "Laminak's very sick.  I need
your help."

The girl was lying on furs on the floor of the tent, the walls of which
had been rolled up so that the cooling wind could pass over her. Amaga,
her mother, and Abinal, her brother, squatted near her.  Glamug was not
present with his medicine paint, his spirit-scaring mask, his rattles
and bull roarer and his baton de commandement.  He was out hunting and,
since game was scarce near the camp, was probably miles away.

Laminak's skin was flushed but dry, and her fever was 101-6 F. She
looked dully at the three as they bent over her, and then she mumbled,
"Koorik?"

"He's not here, but I'm sure he soon will be," Rachel said.

She patted the girl's hand, and then lifted her head to give her a
drink from her canteen.

With Rachel's help, von Billmann took saliva, skin, and blood samples
into the little medical analyzer, together with their observations on
her fever and other physical symptoms.  The analyzer was able to detect
every virus and bacterium and germ known to the twenty-first century,
to define any type of cancer, and to interpret symptoms.

It took fifteen minutes to run through the samples from Laminak, and
the coded result on the tape was: DISEASE UNKNOWN.  POSSIBLE
PSYCHOSOMATIC ORIGIN.  Laminak's fever rose to 102-1 F. and stayed
there until late that night.  She would drink water but had no desire
to eat.  She became delirious that evening, and she mumbled and groaned
much.

Of the few words they could determine, Koorik was the most frequent.

"She's been pining away ever since Koorik left," Amaga said.  "Then she
brightened up when the time came for him to return.  But as the days
passed and he did not come, she became sick.  Last night, she started
to burn, and she will not stop now until she is dead, unless Koorik
comes back.  And there is not much time for that."

"I can't believe that she could get so sick just grieving for John,"
Rachel said.

"But she can," von Billmann said.  "The tribe has stories of men and
women, and children, who have made themselves sick, killed themselves,
with grief at the loss or prolonged absence of a loved one.  It's a
psychological mechanism, true, but it operates far too effectively."

"We don't know that that is the cause of her sickness," Rachel said.

"True.  But until we have a better explanation, I'll accept grief."

Rachel stayed with Laminak even after Glamug returned and began to make
the camp hideous with his howlings, shrill chantings, rattlings, bull
roarings, and sudden shrieks.  She did all she could to help the girl
and at the same time stay out of Glamug's way.  She also kept a close
observation of the progress of the illness for the expedition's
records.

The morning of the third day, just as the sun came up, Laminak breathed
her death rattle.

Glamug stopped his shuffling and chanting, got down on his knees, and
marked her forehead and breasts with red ocher.

Then he stood up, removed his mask, and looked at Rachel with tired
eyes and drooping face.

"For a little while last night, I rested," he said.  "And I had a
vision.  I saw Koorik running toward us across a field with a high
cliff ahead.  And behind him bounded a lion.  The lion was very close,
and then Koorik was running through the shallow stream at the base of
the cliff.  This slowed him down, and the lion roared with triumph, and
it seized Koorik.  And then they were rolling in the water, and Koorik
had only his shining gray knife to defend himself against the great
lion.  His thunder stick was empty; it had lost its death-dealing
powers.  And his spear was in the throat of a lioness, the mate of the
lion that pursued Koorik."

Rachel understood that Glamug had fallen asleep for a few minutes,
though she could have sworn that his racket had gone on all night
without a second's break.  He had had a dream and, as was the custom,
he must tell the nearest person the dream as soon as possible.

"Did Koorik get away from the lion?  Or was he... ?"

"Was he killed?"  Glamug said.  "I do not know.  The vision faded, and
I was sitting outside the tent of Laminak and shivering with the cold.
Not with the cold of the night wind, because that was warm.  With the
cold of the wind that blows death."

Rachel told Drummond and Robert of Glamug's vision.  Drummond scoffed
at it, saying that it was a wish on the part of the witch doctor, who
must resent Gribardsun's takeover of his role as healer.  That was all
there was to it.  Von Billmann, who had experience with sanctuary
people, was not so skeptical.

"But if his dream was a form of telepathy, why didn't I see John
instead of Glamug?  I'm much closer to John than that primitive
quack!"

"He's no quack; he believes in what he does and practices to the best
of his ability," von Billmann said.  "As for why he received the
message if there was a message well, he is a receiver, and you are not.
He's tuned in, on the proper wavelength."

Rachel sneered, but she was worried.  She would have laughed about the
vision in her own environment, the towering many-leveled
twenty-first-century megalopolis, but in this savage world it was as
easy to believe in ESP and ghosts as it was to believe in mammoths and
cave lions.  It was summer and therefore hot.  The huge deer flies and
the smaller flies were numerous, and the tribe must not be kept too
long from reaping the summer.  The wake took place that day, and
Laminak was buried at dawn the next morning.  A hole five feet long and
three feet wide and two feet deep was dug.  A mammoth hide was placed
in the bottom of the hole and on this bear hides were placed.  Laminak,
wrapped around the loins with the fur of a female bear cub, her body
elsewhere daubed with red ocher, and a chaplet of bright saxifrage
around her head, was carried by four men to the grave.  There, while
drums beat, flutes wailed, and a bull roarer boomed, she was placed on
her right side.  Her face was toward the rising sun.  She wore a strand
of sea shells around her neck, and a wooden doll with human hair, the
doll she had put aside two years ago but kept with her few valuables,
was placed by her side.

More bright saxifrage petals were strewn over her and two mammoth tusks
were crossed over her.  Then dirt was thrown over her with wooden
shovels, and afterward large rocks were piled over the dirt to keep the
hyenas and the wolves off.

Rachel wept as the dirt fell over the blue-gray, red-streaked face and
the bright yellow hair.  She had resented, even disliked the child,
because of her love for Gribardsun and his obvious affection for her.
But she was crying, and it may have been for both reasons.  Even she
did not know.  But there was no doubt that in the death of the girl she
saw more than one death.  Perhaps she was reminded of the inevitability
of the death of everyone who had been born and who was to be born.  Of
what use was life when it must end?  Once you were dead, it did not
matter if you had lived a hundred years, a happy hundred years.  You
did not know that you had lived, and you might as well never have
lived.

Time had discarded Laminak, and Time would remove even the evidences of
her burial.  Rachel knew every inch of this area, because part of her
training for the expedition had been an archeological survey of the
territory.  Every bit had been dug up, and there was no grave here in
Rachel's time.  There was not even evidence that Laminak's tribe had
camped for generations under this overhang.  Sometime in the
postglacial age, storms, heavy rains, and floods would wash away
everything from under the overhang down to the time when Neanderthals
had lived here.  And then the dirt deposited above the Neanderthal
layers would be free of human traces.  And Laminak's grave would be
washed out and her bones carried down the valley and lost somewhere in
the river.  The waters would come with such force they would roll away
even the large stones piled above her.

When the last stone had been placed, Glamug danced nine times around
the grave, shaking the baton to the north, east, south, and west.  Then
he abruptly quit the place, walking toward his tent, where his wife had
prepared a broth of water and various boiled roots in a bowl made from
the skull of a reindeer.  He would drink that cleansing drink, and the
ceremony would be over.

Two days later, Rachel saw John Gribardsun.  She had been filing away
the film pellets and specimens in the vessel.  Her work completed, she
left the vessel and at once saw the tiny figure far to the northwest.
Even at that distance, it was obviously John.  Using her binoculars,
she was able to amplify him enough so that she could see the details of
his face.  Her heart began beating even more rapidly.

He recognized her and waved at her but did not increase his pace.  He
was trotting along at a rate that would have prostrated the other
scientists and would have left even the strongest of the tribes people
far behind.  Yet, when he stopped before her, he was not breathing
overly hard.

He smiled and said, "Hello!"  and she came to him put her arms around
him, and wept.  She told him of Laminak and, with a cruelty she could
not understand until later, told him that Laminak had died of grief for
him.

Gribardsun pushed her away and said, "You don't really know what killed
her, do you?  The analyzer isn't infallible or panoramic in its
coverage of diseases, you know."

"I'm sorry," she said.  "I shouldn't have told you that.  But all of us
thought that was why she died.  It was so evident."

"I can't be bound to one place or to one person," he said.  "If what
you say is true, then she would have been..."

"Unsuitable for you?"  she said.  "She wouldn't have made a good wife
for you after all?  John, you must be out of your mind.  She couldn't
have gone with you to our time.  She would have died there, in an alien
and completely bewildering world, and cut off from her tribe.  If she
died just because she thought you would never return, she surely would
have died if she were separated forever from her own people.  You know
how these primitives are."

"I didn't say I planned to marry her," he said.  "I was very fond of
her.  And I feel I feel..."

He turned away and walked around to the other side of the vessel.
Rachel wept again, this time partly for her sympathy with him, because
she was sure he was crying for Laminak, and partly for herself, because
his grief for Laminak meant that he did not love Rachel.  Or perhaps
her tears were for everybody.

A few minutes later, his eyes red, he reappeared.  "Let's go to the
camp," he said.  "You tell me what's happened while I've been gone."

But Rachel insisted on knowing whether or not he had been attacked by
lions.  He was surprised, but when she told him of Glamug's vision, he
said, "He does have a form of ESP.  Nothing too rare in that among
preliterates.  Yes, I had a run-in with a lion and his mate, and things
went much as Glamug said."

"But he said you had only a knife to defend yourself against an
unwounded lion."

"That's true," he said.  "And here I am, and the lion is dead."

And that was all he would say about the incident.

That night, while his colleagues and the chief men of the two tribes
sat around a large fire, he described his journey.  He had traveled
northwestward on as straight a line as he could maintain.  He averaged
about fifty miles a day, though there were a few days when he just
walked along so that he could make a rapid study of the terrain and the
fauna and flora.  He had crossed the land that would be under the
English Channel when the glaciers had sufficiently melted.  He found
the Thames and the site of what would be London, much of which was
covered with marsh or shallow lakes.

The land was even more barren and tundra-like than in France.  He had
seen a few mammoths and rhinoceroses, but exceedingly few lions, bears,
or hyenas.  But there were many wolves, which hunted mostly the
reindeer and horses.

He had seen not a single human being, though there should be a few in
England along the southern coast.

He journeyed northward and found that the glacier did not cover the
site of his ancestral hall between the sites of Chesterfield and
Bakewell in Derbyshire-to-be.  But it had only recently retreated, and
nothing but moss and some azaleas and saxifrage were growing.
Gribardsun's other main ancestral holding, in Yorkshire, where his
family's twelfth-century castle would stand, was still covered with
hundreds of feet of ice.

"I made a number of observations along the glacial front, traveling a
hundred miles along it," he said.  "And then I turned back and headed
toward home.  But I was held up for two days in a cave in the land
bridge by a pack of wolves who didn't seem to know they should have an
instinctive fear of man.  There must have been over fifty in the pack;
I've never seen such a large one."

"What happened to your rifle?"  von Billmann asked.

"I lost it when I was climbing up the hill to get away from the wolves.
I was stopping now and then to shoot one, but they were not discouraged
by their losses.  They just ate their dead and kept on after me.  I
think they were especially hungry, otherwise they wouldn't have been so
determined.

"Anyway, I slipped and had to grab hold of indentations in the rocks to
keep from falling into their mouths.  And the rifle went down a
fissure, and I could not reach it after I got rid of the wolves.  So I
went on."

"You should have taken a revolver," Rachel said.

"I wanted as little weight as possible."

"But how did you get rid of the wolves if you had only your knife?"
Drummond asked him.  Gribardsun had told them that the spear he had
used on the lioness had been made after the wolf incident.

"I killed a few as they came up the hill at me," Gribardsun said. "They
could only squeeze through the opening into the cave one at a time. 
After a while, they gave up.  I think they'd eaten so many of their own
pack, the edge of their hunger was gone."

When told that Drummond had regained his sanity, Gribardsun had made
only one comment.  He said that he hoped that Dummond had regained all
of his mind.  Rachel supposed that he meant by that that he hoped
Drummond had gotten over his desire to kill her and Gribardsun.

Drummond assured them that he had accepted reality, and that, whatever
they did, he would not try any violence.  Not that he ever had, except
for the time when he had shot at Rachel.

Gribardsun gave Drummond a series of psychological tests designed to
uncover deeply hidden feelings of violence toward particular persons.
The results seemed to satisfy him, since he gave Drummond firearms. But
Rachel noticed that Gribardsun never allowed Drummond to get behind him
when he was armed.

Something decisive had happened to that group.  Though there was always
a certain amount of reserve among the three von Billmann alone being
treated quite warmly by all the others they got along with a minimum of
friction.  All worked harder than before.  Moreover, there were long
periods when they did not see each other.  Their studies of the area
around the campsite had exhausted everything of interest there except
the tribes people themselves.  They went farther and farther afield on
their own specialties.

Winter struck.  Though the world temperature was slowly climbing, and
the glaciers would melt a little more every year, the cold and the snow
were brutal.  And this year the tribes had to leave the overhang and
follow the reindeer herds.  The big game in this area had been cleaned
out.  Moreover, the herds seemed to have deserted this part of
France.

To von Billmann's joy, Gribardsun decided they should head for
Czechoslovakia-to-be.  They would progress slowly because of the heavy
snows, but when they got to Czechoslovakia, they would settle down
there for the winter, and also the next summer.  Provided, of course,
that game was not too scarce there.

They moved north of the Alps, which were covered with giant glaciers,
and into Germany and along the Magdalenian Danube which did not follow
the course of the twenty-first century river and then northward into
Czechoslovakia.  There they stayed in a semi cave during the whiter.
Thammash, the chief, developed arthritis, which Gribardsun alleviated
with medicine.  But the medicine had an unexpected and long-hidden side
effect, and one day that summer, while Thammash was running after a
wounded horse, he dropped dead.  Gribardsun dissected him and found
that his heart muscles were damaged.  The damage was the result of an
intricate series of imbalances, a sort of somatic Rube Goldberg
Mechanism.

No babies or mothers died during birth that year, though there were
several miscarriages.

Angrogrim, the strong man, slipped just as he was about to drive a
spear into a baby mammoth that had been cut out from the herd.  His
head struck a rock, and he died even before the baby stepped on his
chest and crushed it.

Amaga married Krnal, a Shluwg whose wife had choked on a fish bone

The following summer, the tribes moved back to the overhang in the
valley of La Vezere in France.  Von Billmann was very disappointed,
because he had not found a single language which seemed capable of
developing into Indo-Hittite.

"You really didn't think you would, did you?"  John said.  "Whoever the
pre-Indo-Hittites are, they are probably in Asia or Russia somewhere.
They won't be migrating to Germany for several thousands of years yet
probably.

"Of course," he added, smiling slightly, 'it's possible that they are
only a few miles from us at this very moment."

"You have a small sadistic streak in you, John," von Billmann said.

"Perhaps.  However, if you are on the next expedition, which will go to
8000 B.C."  you may find your long-lost speakers."

"But I want to find them now!"

"Perhaps something entirely unforeseen will happen to enlighten you."

Von Billmann remembered that remark much later.

Nine

Time went swiftly, and then suddenly the day of departure was close.
Four years had passed.  The vessel was crowded with specimens and only
a few had yet to be collected.  These were mainly spermatozoa and ova
which would be taken from animals shot with the anesthetic-bearing
missiles.  When the vessel returned to the twenty-first century, the
frozen sperm and eggs would be thawed out and appropriately united in
tubes.  The fetuses would be placed in the uteri of foster mothers cows
in the case of most of the larger animals but, in the zoo, elephants or
whales in the case of the largest.  The biological science of the
twenty-first century permitted the young of one species to flourish in
the womb of another.  And so, the twenty-first century would soon have
in their zoos and reservations beasts that had been extinct for many
thousands of years.

Moreover, the sperm and eggs of humans were in the cryogenic tanks.
These would be united and implanted in human females, and the children
would be brought up by their foster parents.  In everything except
physical structure, they would be twenty-first centurians.  But they
would be studied by scientists.  And their children, hybrids of
Magdalenians and modern, would be studied.

To compensate for the mass of the specimens, parts of the vessel had to
be removed.  Everything was removed except the files and those devices
needed to keep the specimens from decay.  Everything had been carefully
weighed before the vessel was launched, but everything was weighed
again.  The day before the vessel was to be retrieved, the weighing
apparatus was removed, and its mass was replaced with artifacts from
thirty tribes, each of which had been weighed.  It was Gribardsun who
suggested that each member of the four should also be reweighed.

"If something should happen to one of us, and he wasn't able to get
aboard, his weight should be replaced by something valuable."

"For heaven's sake, John!"  Rachel said.  "What could happen?  We're
not leaving the vicinity of the vessel except to go to the farewell
feast tonight.  And if somebody got sick or fell and broke his neck,
we'd still take him along."

"True, but I feel that we should take no chances.  You know how serious
a deviation in weight can be when the tracers'll be searching for us.
Let's take no chances whatsoever."

The 'reserves," as von Billmann called them, were artifacts reluctantly
discarded because there just was not enough room for them.  Four piles
were carefully selected, each representing the weight of one of the
four.  Whatever additions or subtractions had to be made were done with
mineral specimens.

The celebration that night was long and exhausting and often touching.
The tribes, carrying pine torches, followed them to the vessel and then
each member of the Wota'shaimg and the Shluwg kissed each of the
explorers.  And then, wailing and chanting, they retreated to a
distance of a hundred yards.  There they settled down to wait for the
dawn, since the departure retrieval was set for shortly after
sunrise.

The four made no attempt to sleep.  They sat in their chairs and talked
and now and then looked at the screen showing them the outside.  The
tribes people were all awake too, except for the babies and small
children.

The four talked animatedly and even gaily; for the first time in a long
while the shadow of the past had lifted.  Rachel found herself hoping
that Gribardsun might forget his prejudices against coming between a
man and his wife.  She would file a divorce claim as soon as she was
out of quarantine, and she would convince John that he did love her,
that he had only suppressed his love because of his old-fashioned
morality.

A few minutes before sunrise, John Gribardsun rose from the chair.  He
turned, pulled out a black recording ball, and placed it in a
depression on the armrest of chair.

Time leaving now," he said.  "You'll want to stow my pile of artifacts
aboard as quickly as possible to replace my mass.  Anything you want to
know is in the ball.  Please don't ask me anything now or try to hold
me back.  You can't do that; all three of you together aren't strong
enough and you know it.

"I'm sorry to be so abrupt.  You're very shocked.  But I don't like
long goodbyes or arguments, and I knew that that was what I'd get if I
told you ahead of time."

He paused, looked at their pale faces, and said, Tm staying here.  I
prefer this world to the one we left.  That's all."

He turned and pressed the button that opened the vault-like door and
stepped outside.  As he did so, the tribes people cried out and some
raced toward him.  They must have guessed that he had decided to stay
with them, and they were happy.  At least, most of them were.  No man
ever lived that was one hundred per cent popular.

Rachel cried out, "Stop him!  Stop him!"

"With what?"  Drummond said.  He had recovered swiftly from his shock
and seemed almost as joyous as the tribesmen.  "We don't have any guns,
and he wouldn't pay any attention to them if we did.  And, as he said,
he could take all three of us on and not even get up a sweat."

He ran to the pile that was to be Gribardsun's substitute and picked up
a bag of artifacts.  "You two had better help me, and quick!"  he said.
"We haven't got much time!"

Rachel was weeping by now and she looked as if she would like to run
after Gribardsun.  But she picked up a bag, too, and walked to the
vessel after Drummond.  Von Billmann followed her with two sacks.  He
lowered them to the floor by the entrance and blocked her as she tried
to get out again.  Drummond pressed the button, and all three were
quickly shut in again.  They got into their chairs and strapped
themselves in and waited.

On the screen they could see Gribardsun standing before the tribe.  He
lifted a hand in farewell.

Sixty-three seconds passed.  And they were back in the twenty-first
century.  The vessel was forty yards from the edge of the hill, and the
walls around the buildings of the project towered over them.  Then
figures clad in white helmets and suits, carrying tanks on their backs
and hoses in their hands, stepped out of a small building on their
right.  The first phase of the quarantine had started.

Von Billmann answered the chief administrator.  The eyes of the entire
world were on them; everyone of the nine thousand, nine hundred and
ninety-nine channels were devoted to the time vessel.  But Rachel was
paying no attention to the outside.  She had dropped the recording
ball, no larger than a child's marble, into the machine, and she was
listening to John Gribardsun's voice.

Seven days later, the three were allowed to leave.  The first thing
they did was to go to the valley below, where the overhang still
existed.  Here they saw the hole in the back wall, broken open by the
archeologists and project scientists.  Behind six feet of rock was the
chamber Gribardsun had promised they would find.  And they also found
the great stacks of artifacts and records that he said he planned to
leave there, if he lived long enough.

Most of the records were in the form of John's handwriting on vellum
and then on paper.  But his last message, made in 1872, was recorded in
a ball in one of the machines he had taken from the vessel.

"To you three, Robert, Drummond, and Rachel, it's only been a week, but
to me, almost 14,000 years have passed.  I have lived for more than
that; I have lived far longer than seems right."

"I did not think, the day I said goodbye forever to you, that I would
live nearly this long.  I am completely unafraid of death which makes
me somewhat nonhuman.  I'm not afraid but I also have a very strong
will to live.  Yet the mathematical probabilities of my living this
long were very low.  So many accidents can happen in 14,000 years; so
many people and beasts would try to kill me.  But they failed, and
though I came near dying a number of times, I still live."

"I still live.  But for how long?  Today is January 31, a Wednesday.
Tomorrow, or sometime in the next few days, I'll be conceived."

"Will Time tolerate two John Gribardsuns?

"Is there something in the structure of Time which win kill me?  Or
will I be erased from the fabric of Space-Time?

"I'll know only if I am spared.  If I am killed or erased, I will be
conscious one second and unconscious, because dead or obliterated, the
next.

"Whatever happens, I can't explain.  I have lived as no other man has
lived, and for longer than any other man has lived.

"As you know now, I was fortunate enough to be given an elixir by a
witch doctor who was the last man of his tribe.  He belonged to a
family the original head of which, some generations before, had
discovered how to make the elixir, a vile-tasting devil's brew, from
certain African herbs, blood, and several other constituents I will not
even hint at.  He had a high regard for me because I saved his life and
also because he thought I was some sort of a demigod.  He knew of my
rather peculiar upbringing.

"But all that was explained on the ball I gave Rachel.

"How are you, Rachel?  And you, Drummond?  And you, Robert?

"Strange to speak to the unborn.  I have gotten accustomed to speaking
with the long dead.  But the unborn Well, I won't take up the valuable
recording space in the ball to talk about the paradoxes of Time.  That
could go on and on.

"Robert, I know that the expedition of 8000 B.C. located your
pre-Indo-Hittite speakers.  I was one of the informants, None of the
expedition suspected that I had already recorded the pre-I-H dialects
in far more detail than they would ever be able to do with their
limited time.  And they were looking for me, too.  I suppose they were
looking for me because of this message.  But they failed.  I won't tell
you why, of course, because then the expedition would be able to
identify me.  Ever if, in a sense, the expedition has already occurred.
Well, I said I'd not get into the paradoxes.

"You'll find, Robert, that your pre-Indo-Hittite speech of 8000 B.C.
arose from the very last place you would have, suspected.

"Our two tribes, the Wota'shaimg and the Shluwg, eventually abandoned
their original tongues and adopted the pidgin.  The result was a simple
analytical system.  But over the course of six millennia, it became a
poly syllabled synthetic speech which eventually developed into the
pre-Indo-Hittite the second expedition studied.  And this, of course,
became the Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Italic, Celtic,
and a dozen other language families which were not recorded or even
heard of by civilized peoples.  Until now."

Gribardsun chuckled and said, "So if it hadn't been for time travel,
Robert, Indo-Hittite, and hence, German, Yiddish, English, French, and
all those other related tongues would never have existed.

"Yes, I know you're going to say that our tribes had different blood
groups than the Indo-Hittite speakers.  But many invasions migrations,
rather occurred from the East, and our tribe, which had become rather
large between 12,000 B.C. and 8000 B.C."  absorbed so many of the
newcomers, and imposed their language on so many, that the original
blood group was largely lost."

Von Billmann had turned pale shortly after Gribardsun started talking.
He sat down.  He seemed to be having trouble getting his breath. Rachel
brought him a drink of water, and he sat up and looked around as if he
hoped someone had strength to give him.

"Do you realize what he's saying?  I won't be on the 8000 B.C.
expedition!  But why?  Was I dead before it could be launched?  Or
why?"

Anderson, the project head, turned on the recorder again, since no one
could give an answer and they did not want to dwell on the subject.

"There was one other expedition, that which was sent in 3500 B.C. to
the Mesopotamian area.  The others that had been planned were not
realized.  I waited for them, but they did not show.  I wonder why.
Something catastrophic prevented them?  I don't know, and you, of
course, won't know why until it happens.

"Be that as it may, here are the collections I made.  The expedition
would never have been made if it had not been for me, as you now know.
But I still feel a sense of obligation to the people who gave me this
chance to live when the world was fresh.  And I have had so much
scientific training that I do appreciate what this collection will
mean.  So, throughout the millennia, I have cached artifacts and
specimens and made notes.  There are at least a hundred thousand
photographs here, since I kept back some of the balls for this purpose.
You will find photographs, surreptitiously taken, of course, of the
original historical Hercules myself Nebuchadnezzar, the historical
Moses not myself Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, Eric the Red, whom I took
from behind a bush, having been waiting for six months for him to land,
the historical Odysseus, the real city of Troy, the first Pharaoh,
several of the first emperors of China and Kublai Khan and Marco Polo.
There are also photos of the historical Jesus, Gautama, and Mohammed,
Charlemagne, Saladin, the historical Beowulf, a group photograph of the
actual founders of the city of Rome.  No Romulus and Remus existed, I
am sorry to say.  "I could go on, but you'll find everything
catalogued.  "I was a merchant-ship captain supplying the Achaean army,
and I am mentioned in Homer, though not exactly in the role of a
merchant.  But I stayed away from the fighting there, as I stayed away
from most fighting.  As I stayed away from most centers of
civilization.  I decided that if I was going to survive for a long
time, I would have to live a backwoods, backcountry life.  I spent
altogether a thousand years in the wilds of Africa and another in Asia
and the pre-Columbian Americas, though not in a continuous stretch, of
course.

"Still, I got hungry for city life now and then, and I did want to keep
watch on the rise of civilizations.  So I spent time in Egypt and
Mesopotamia and along the Indus and the Yellow River and in ancient
Crete and Greece.  And I was once Quetzalcoatl, the details of whose
story you will find here.  "I have been everywhere a dozen times and
seen everything.  I was the first human to set foot on the island of
Tahiti; the second time I went there, I beat the first raft load of
Polynesians by a week.

"But all this is in the records.

"I have been married many times and fathered many children.  Each of
you is my descendant.  I would say that almost every human being that
has lived since 5000 B.C. is my descendant.  I am my own ancestor many
times over.

"I could talk forever.  I could reveal what lay behind many of the
great mysteries of history and I could solve many of the lesser, but
just as intriguing, mysteries.  For example, I was on the Marie
Celeste.

I will be sitting under this overhang when my moment of conception
comes.  What will happen then?  I suggest you researchers read the
newspaper accounts and determine if the body of a man six-foot-three,
with black hair and gray eyes, was found on this ledge.  If it wasn't,
then I may just have disappeared.  Or perhaps I was found only after
I'd become a skeleton.  Or some body snatcher took me away.  The
possibilities within Time's fold are many.

"Whatever happens, I am grateful that I have lived a life such as no
man has lived.

"And now, Rachel, for you.  You will be on the 3500 B.C. expedition.
And we will be married in Ur of the Chaldees.  You will decide to stay
behind when your colleagues return to their time.

"And there we two will live as Terah and his wife, and you will bear
Abraham.

"I tell you this because, of course, the time came when we had to part
again.  You never got the elixir because I never had a chance to
analyze it and so make some more.  So you died.

"I am telling you this so that you may try to change the course of
Time.  If you decide not to go on the expedition, then something will
happen contrary to my experience, to my knowledge of Time as it
happened.

"Is this possible?  I don't know.  I'll know the day the expedition
arrives.

"But I did come to love you, Rachel.  And you were the ancestress of
Moses and King David and, of course, of yourself.  And of me.

"But perhaps you do not want this.

"We shall see.

"In the meantime, here is my collection, the secrets of the ages
revealed, art objects that were thought lost forever.  Knowledge that
mankind would never have possessed otherwise.

"Time's last gift.

"Goodbye, my friends.  Hello, Rachel.  Perhaps."

There was an uproar when the voice ceased.

Rachel was weeping.

But she was happy.

End.

