"Oh my, yes----"
"We'll have to make a camp before we can do any exploring, Doc. Here,
out in the open. See anything in the woods?"
"Something followed. More or less human----"
"So we know the camp has to be in the open."
"Do we, Ed?" Wright watched the distant bat wings. Spearman stared.
"Can't chance a forest we don't know."
"Still, I mean to look things over a bit. Feel not so good, Ann?"
"All right," she said, glancing from Wright to Spearman, silently
begging to know: _Who is leader?_ "Slightly slap-happy, Doc."
"Mm, sure." Wright hitched his rifle. "Going to look at that nearest
smoke. You come, Paul--or you, Ed. One of you should stay here."
Spearman leaned against the lifeboat, still-faced. "Paul can go if he
wants to. I think it's a risk and a waste of time."
Paul watched him a moment, frightened not by a man whom he had never
quite been able to like, but by the withdrawal itself, the sense of a
barrier to communication. _We start with a division on this first
morning of the world...?_ Paul hugged his own rifle and followed
Wright into the long whisper of the grass.
4
Moist heat pressed down, but the air of the meadow was sweet. There
were marks of trampling as well as the swath the boat had cut--trails,
places where something might have crouched. Under his breath Wright
asked, "Feel all right, Paul?"
Truth was more needed than a show of courage. "Not perfect, Doc. Am I
flushed? You are, a little."
"Yes. Trace of fever; may wear off. Here's something----"
They had not come far. Two red bodies barely three feet tall sprawled
near each other face down in the grass. Paul noticed oval bulges
between shoulder blades modified to accommodate them, the pathos of
fingers--seven-fingered hands--holding earth in a final grasp. The
male wore a loincloth of black fabric and a quiver almost full of
arrows; the female had a grass skirt, and her hand was tight on a
stone-headed spear longer than herself. A bow of carved wood lay some
distance away; one could see how the little man had crawled in his
agony after the bow was lost. Wright turned them over gently--bald
skulls, no trace of body hair on skin of a rich copper color exciting
to a painter's vision, green eyes with no visible whites in human
faces heavily tattooed, wide-open eyes, accusing no one. The bodies
were in rigor, a shaft in the man's neck, the woman pierced by an
arrow in the side. Blood colored the grass, dry but eloquent.
"War too," said Wright, and pulled out the arrows, showing Paul the
stone heads, the intricate carving of the wood, thin-whittled wooden
vanes taking the place of feathers. "Stone Age war...."
The male pygmy was the smaller of the two, and softer, his shape not
feminine but rounded and smooth. Both seemed mature, so far as age
could be guessed at all. The woman was rugged, with a coarser skin and
the scar tissue of old wounds; her two pairs of breasts were scarcely
more prominent than the ridged muscles of her midget chest.
Wright mulled it over, kneading his wrinkled throat. "Physical
refinements of evolution as far along as our own. Straight thigh and
neck, perfect upright posture; there was no slouch or belly sag when
they were on their feet. Human jaw, big brain case. That furry giant I
saw in the woods had complete upright posture too. Oh, it's natural,
Paul. You stick fins on an ocean vertebrate, turn him into a
four-legged land animal, give him a few hundred million years. Almost
bound to free his front limbs if they've stayed unspecialized." In the
gaunt face, sadness and pity struggled with a bitter sort of mirth.
"The brain gets large, boy, and away you go, to--ach--to the
Federation versus the Asian Empire--Lincoln, Rembrandt, the state
papers of Abraham Brown. And to you and Dorothy and the baby." Wright
stood erect, brushing bony knees, calm again. "I'm almost pleased to
find it this primitive. I don't think it can have gone further
anywhere on the planet, or we'd have seen cities, farms, roads, in the
photographs. Unless----"
"Unless what, Doctor?"
"Oh--unless there might be forms with no Earth parallel. In the
forests perhaps--even underground. Thought of that? But that's
speculations, and our little soldiers here are fact. They have a
civilization--arrows say so, tattooing, garments. Rigid,
tradition-bound--or maybe not, depending on how much language they've
developed to tie 'emselves in knots with."
"Bow and arrow--why, suh, almost as advanced as not being afraid to
end a sentence with a preposition."
"Hell with you. Twenty thousand years ago, or whenever it was we
reached our present physique, if there'd been anything external to
teach men how to behave like grown-ups----. Well, we had to sweat it
out--tribal wars, bigger wars, venerated fears, errors, and
stupidities. But maybe here----"
"Are _we_ big enough?"
Wright shut his eyes. His thin cheeks were too bright; there was a
tremor in the rifle tip. "Wish I knew, Paul. We have to try."
Ed Spearman yelled, "Look out!" A rifle banged, and a pistol.
A brown darkness had come swooping from the lake. Others
followed--mud-brown, squealing. They had banked at the noise of the
shots to circle overhead. Paul fired; a near one tumbled, screeching,
thrashing a narrow wolfish head on a long neck, black teeth snapping
in the death throes--but even now it was trying to hobble forward and
get at them. The others wheeled lower until Wright's rifle spoke, and
Spearman's; there was the dry slap of Dorothy's automatic pistol.
"Back to the trees!" The wounded thing on the ground set up a bubbling
howl.
More were coming, with weaving of pointed red-eyed heads on mobile
necks. Paul ran, Wright loping beside him, hearing the crash of their
friends' weapons. Something slammed Paul's shoulder, flopped against
his leg, tripping him. He tumbled over a shape furry and violent that
smelled of fish and carrion. He fought clear of it, sobbing in animal
wrath, and reached the shelter of the trees and Dorothy's embrace.
Sweat blinded him. Wright was clutching him too, getting his jacket
off.
"Flesh wound. The hind foot got you----"
"I saw it." Ann Bryan choked. "Saw it happen. Filthy claws----"
Wright had a bottle of antiseptic. "Son, you ain't going to like this.
Hang on to the lady." But the pain was a welcome flare. Paul's eyes
cleared as Wright made him a bandage of gauze, with Dorothy's help. He
could look from the shelter of overhanging branches at a confusion of
wings. The creatures had not followed as far as the lifeboat; perhaps
its shining mass disturbed them.