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  * * * * *

  PART 2

  * * * * *

  It was early morning as Bill Humbolt sat by the fire in his cave andstudied the map Craig had made of the plateau's mountain. Craig had leftthe mountain nameless and he dipped his pen in ink to write: _CraigMountains_.

  "Bill----"

  Delmont Anders entered very quietly, what he had to tell already evidenton his face.

  "He died last night, Bill."

  It was something he had been expecting to come at any time but the lackof surprise did not diminish the sense of loss. Lake had been the lastof the Old Ones, the last of those who had worked and fought andshortened the years of their lives that the Young Ones might have achance to live. Now he was gone--now a brief era was ended, a valiant,bloody chapter written and finished.

  And he was the new leader who would decree how the next chapter shouldbe written, only four years older than the boy who was looking at himwith an unconscious appeal for reassurance on his face....

  "You'd better tell Jim," he said. "Then, a little later, I want to talkto everyone about the things we'll start doing as soon as spring comes."

  "You mean, the hunting?" Delmont asked.

  "No--more than just the hunting."

  He sat for a while after Delmont left, looking back down the years thathad preceded that day, back to that first morning on Ragnarok.

  He had set a goal for himself that morning when he left his toy bear inthe dust behind him and walked beside Julia into the new and perilousway of life. He had promised himself that some day he would watch theGerns die and beg for mercy as they died and he would give them the samemercy they had given his mother.

  As he grew older he realized that his hatred, alone, was a futile thing.There would have to be a way of leaving Ragnarok and there would have tobe weapons with which to fight the Gerns. These would be thingsimpossible and beyond his reach unless he had the help of all the othersin united, coordinated effort.

  To make certain of that united effort he would have to be their leader.So for eleven years he had studied and trained until there was no onewho could use a bow or spear quite as well as he could, no one who couldtravel as far in a day or spot a unicorn ambush as quickly. And therewas no one, with the exception of George Ord, who had studied as manytextbooks as he had.

  He had reached his first goal--he was leader. For all of them thereexisted the second goal: the hope of someday leaving Ragnarok and takingAthena from the Gerns. For many of them, perhaps, it was only wishfuldreaming but for him it was the prime driving force of his life.

  There was so much for them to do and their lives were so short in whichto do it. For so long as he was leader they would not waste a day inidle wishing....

  * * * * *

  When the others were gathered to hear what he had to say he spoke tothem:

  "We're going to continue where the Old Ones had to leave off. We'rebetter adapted than they were and we're going to find metals to make aship if there are any to be found.

  "Somewhere on Ragnarok, on the northwest side of a range similar to theCraig Mountains on the plateau, is a deep valley that the DunbarExpedition called the Chasm. They didn't investigate it closely sincetheir instruments showed no metals there but they saw strata in oneplace that was red; an iron discoloration. Maybe we can find a veinthere that was too small for them to have paid any attention to. Sowe'll go over the Craigs as soon as the snow melts from them."

  "That will be in early summer," George Ord said, his black eyesthoughtful. "Whoever goes will have to time their return for either justbefore the prowlers and unicorns come back from the north or wait untilthey've all migrated down off the plateau."

  It was something Humbolt had been thinking about and wishing they couldremedy. Men could elude unicorn attacks wherever there were trees largeenough to offer safety and even prowler attacks could be warded offwherever there were trees for refuge; spears holding back the prowlerswho would climb the trees while arrows picked off the ones on theground. But there were no trees on the plateau, and to be caught by aband of prowlers or unicorns there was certain death for any small partyof two or three. For that reason no small parties had ever gone up onthe plateau except when the unicorns and prowlers were gone or nearlyso. It was an inconvenience and it would continue for as long as theirweapons were the slow-to-reload bows.

  "You're supposed to be our combination inventor-craftsman," he said toGeorge. "No one else can compare with you in that respect. Besides,you're not exactly enthusiastic about such hard work as mountainclimbing. So from now on you'll do the kind of work you're best fittedfor. Your first job is to make us a better bow. Make it like a crossbow,with a sliding action to draw and cock the string and with a magazine ofarrows mounted on top of it."

  George studied the idea thoughtfully. "The general principle is simple,"he said. "I'll see what I can do."

  "How many of us will go over the Craig Mountains, Bill?" Dan Barberasked.

  "You and I," Humbolt answered. "A three-man party under Bob Craig willgo into the Western Hills and another party under Johnny Stevens will gointo the Eastern Hills."

  He looked toward the adjoining cave where the guns had been stored forso long, coated with unicorn tallow to protect them from rust.

  "We could make gun powder if we could find a deposit of saltpeter. Wealready know where there's a little sulphur. The guns would have to beconverted to flintlocks, though, since we don't have what we need forcartridge priming material. Worse, we'd have to use ceramic bullets.They would be inefficient--too light, and destructive to the bores. Butwe would need powder for mining if we ever found any iron. And, if wecan't have metal bullets to shoot the Gerns, we can have bombs to blastthem with."

  "Suppose," Johnny Stevens said, "that we never do find the metals tomake a ship. How will we ever leave Ragnarok if that happens?"

  "There's another way--a possible way--of leaving here without a ship ofour own. If there are no metals we'll have to try it."

  "Why wait?" Bob Craig demanded. "Why not try it now?"

  "Because the odds would be about ten thousand to one in favor of theGerns. But we'll try it if everything else fails."

  * * * * *

  George made, altered, and rejected four different types of crossbowsbefore he perfected a reloading bow that met his critical approval. Hebrought it to where Humbolt stood outside the caves early one spring daywhen the grass was sending up the first green shoots on the southernhillsides and the long winter was finally dying.

  "Here it is," he said, handing Humbolt the bow. "Try it."

  He took it, noting the fine balance of it. Projecting down from thecenter of the bow, at right angles to it, was a stock shaped to fit thegrip of the left hand. Under the crossbar was a sliding stock for theright hand, shaped like the butt of a pistol and fitted with a trigger.Mounted slightly above and to one side of the crossbar was a magazinecontaining ten short arrows.

  The pistol grip was in position near the forestock. He pulled it backthe length of the crossbar and it brought the string with it, stretchingit taut. There was a click as the trigger mechanism locked the bowstringin place and at the same time a concealed spring arrangement shoved anarrow into place against the string.

  He took quick aim at a distant tree and pressed the trigger. There was atwang as the arrow was ejected. He jerked the sliding pistol gripforward and back to reload, pressing the trigger an instant later.Another arrow went its way.

  By the time he had fired the tenth arrow in the magazine he was shootingat the rate of one arrow per second. On the trunk of the distant tree,like a bristle of stiff whiskers, the ten arrows were driven deep intothe wood in an area no larger than the chest of a prowler or head of aunicorn.

  "This is better than I hoped for," he said to George. "One man with oneof these would equal six men with ordinary bows."

  "I'm going to add anothe
r feature," George said. "Bundles of arrows, tento the bundle in special holders, to carry in the quivers. To reload themagazine you'd just slap down a new bundle of arrows, in no more timethan it would take to put one arrow in an ordinary bow. I figured thatwith practice a man should be able to get off forty arrows in not muchmore than twenty seconds."

  George took the bow and went back in the cave to add his new feature.Humbolt stared after him, thinking, _If he can make something like thatout of wood and unicorn gut, what would he be able to give us if hecould have metal?_

  Perhaps George would never have the opportunity to show what he could dowith metal. But Humbolt already felt sure that George's genius would, ifit ever became necessary, make possible the alternate plan for leavingRagnarok.

  * * * * *

  The weeks dragged into months and at last enough snow was gone from theCraigs that Humbolt and Dan Barber could start. They met no opposition.The prowlers had long since disappeared into the north and the unicornswere very scarce. They had no occasion to test the effectiveness of thenew automatic crossbows in combat; a lack of opportunity that irkedBarber.

  "Any other time, if we had ordinary bows," he complained, "the unicornswould be popping up to charge us from all directions."

  "Don't fret," Humbolt consoled him. "This fall, when we come back, theywill be."

  They reached the mountain and stopped near its foot where a creek camedown, its water high and muddy with melting snows. There they hunteduntil they had obtained all the meat they could carry. They would see nomore game when they went up the mountain's canyons. A poisonous weedreplaced most of the grass in all the canyons and the animals ofRagnarok had learned long before to shun the mountain.

  They found the canyon that Craig and his men had tried to explore andstarted up it. It was there that Craig had discovered the quartz andmica and so far as he had been able to tell the head of that canyonwould be the lowest of all the passes over the mountain.

  The canyon went up the mountain diagonally so that the climb was notsteep although it was constant. They began to see mica and quartzcrystals in the creek bed and at noon on the second day they passed thelast stunted tree. Nothing grew higher than that point but the thornypoison weeds and they were scarce.

  The air was noticeably thinner there and their burdens heavier. A shortdistance beyond they came to a small rock monument; Craig's turn-backpoint.

  The next day they found the quartz crystals in place. A mile farther wasthe vein the mica had come from. Of the other minerals Craig had hopedto find, however, there were only traces.

  The fourth day was an eternity of struggling up the now-steeper canyonunder loads that seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds; forcing theirprotesting legs to carry them fifty steps at a time, at the end of whichthey would stop to rest while their lungs labored to suck in the thinair in quick, panting breaths.

  It would have been much easier to have gone around the mountain. But theChasm was supposed to be like a huge cavity scooped out of the plateaubeyond the mountain, rimmed with sheer cliffs a mile high. Only on theside next to the mountain was there a slope leading down into it.

  They stopped for the night where the creek ended in a small spring.There the snow still clung to the canyon's walls and there the canyoncurved, offering them the promise of the summit just around the bend asit had been doing all day.

  The sun was hot and bright the next morning as they made their slow wayon again. The canyon straightened, the steep walls of it flattening outto make a pair of ragged shoulders with a saddle between them.

  They climbed to the summit of the saddle and there, suddenly beforethem, was the other side of the world--and the Chasm.

  Far below them was a plateau, stretching endlessly like the one they hadleft behind them. But the chasm dominated all else. It was a gigantic,sheer-walled valley, a hundred miles long by forty miles wide, sunk deepin the plateau with the tops of its mile-high walls level with the floorof the plateau. The mountain under them dropped swiftly away, slopingdown and down to the level of the plateau and then on, down and downagain, to the bottom of the chasm that was so deep its floor was halfhidden by the morning shadows.

  "My God!" Barber said. "It must be over three miles under us to thebottom, on the vertical. Ten miles of thirty-three per cent grade--if wego down we'll never get out again."

  "You can turn back here if you want to," Humbolt said.

  "Turn back?" Barber's red whiskers seemed to bristle. "Who in hell saidanything about turning back?"

  "Nobody," Humbolt said, smiling a little at Barber's quick flash ofanger.

  He studied the chasm, wishing that they could have some way of cuttingthe quartz crystals and making binoculars. It was a long way to lookwith the naked eye....

  Here and there the chasm thrust out arms into the plateau. All the armswere short, however, and even at their heads the cliffs were vertical.The morning shadows prevented a clear view of much of the chasm and hecould see no sign of the red-stained strata that they were searchingfor.

  In the southwest corner of the chasm, far away and almost imperceptible,he saw a faint cloud rising up from the chasm's floor. It was impossibleto tell what it was and it faded away as he watched.

  Barber saw it, too, and said, "It looked like smoke. Do you supposethere could be people--or some kind of intelligent things--living downthere?"

  "It might have been the vapor from hot springs, condensed by the coolmorning air," he said. "Whatever it was, we'll look into it when we getthere."

  The climb down the steep slope into the chasm was swifter than that upthe canyon but no more pleasant. Carrying a heavy pack down such a gradeexerted a torturous strain upon the backs of the legs.

  The heat increased steadily as they descended. They reached the floor ofthe valley the next day and the noonday heat was so great that Humboltwondered if they might not have trapped themselves into what the summerwould soon transform into a monstrous oven where no life at all couldexist. There could never be any choice, of course--the mountains werepassable only when the weather was hot.

  The floor of the valley was silt, sand and gravel--they would findnothing there. They set out on a circuit of the chasm's walls, followingalong close to the base.

  In many places the mile-high walls were without a single ledge to breaktheir vertical faces. When they came to the first such place they sawthat the ground near the base was riddled with queer little pits, liketiny craters of the moon. As they looked there was a crack like a cannonshot and the ground beside them erupted into an explosion of sand andgravel. When the dust had cleared away there was a new crater where nonehad been before.

  Humbolt wiped the blood from his face where a flying fragment had cut itand said, "The heat of the sun loosens rocks up on the rim. When onefalls a mile in a one point five gravity, it's traveling like a meteor."

  They went on, through the danger zone. As with the peril of the chasm'sheat, there was no choice. Only by observing the material that litteredthe base of the cliffs could they know what minerals, if any, might beabove them.

  On the fifteenth day they saw the red-stained stratum. Humbolt quickenedhis pace, hurrying forward in advance of Barber. The stratum was toohigh up on the wall to be reached but it was not necessary to examine itin place--the base of the cliff was piled thick with fragments from it.

  He felt the first touch of discouragement as he looked at them. Theywere a sandstone, light in weight. The iron present was only what theDunbar Expedition had thought it to be; a mere discoloration.

  They made their way slowly along the foot of the cliff, examining pieceafter piece in the hope of finding something more than iron stains.There was no variation, however, and a mile farther on they came to theend of the red stratum. Beyond that point the rocks were gray, without avestige of iron.

  "So that," Barber said, looking back the way they had come, "is what wewere going to build a ship out of--iron stains!"

  Humbolt did not answer. For him it was more than
a disappointment. Itwas the death of a dream he had held since the year he was nine and hadheard that the Dunbar Expedition had seen iron-stained rock in a deepchasm--the only iron-stained rock on the face of Ragnarok. Surely, hehad thought, there would be enough iron there to build a small ship. Foreleven years he had worked toward the day when he would find it. Now, hehad found it--and it was nothing. The ship was as far away as ever....

  But discouragement was as useless as iron-stained sandstone. He shook itoff and turned to Barber.

  "Let's go," he said. "Maybe we'll find something by the time we circlethe chasm."

  For seven days they risked the danger of death from downward plungingrocks and found nothing. On the eighth day they found the treasure thatwas not treasure.

  They stopped for the evening just within the mouth of one of the chasm'stributaries. Humbolt went out to get a drink where a trickle of waterran through the sand and as he knelt down he saw the flash of somethingred under him, almost buried in the sand.

  He lifted it out. It was a stone half the size of his hand; darklytranslucent and glowing in the light of the setting sun like blood.

  It was a ruby.

  He looked, and saw another gleam a little farther up the stream. It wasanother ruby, almost as large as the first one. Near it was a flawlessblue sapphire. Scattered here and there were smaller rubies andsapphires, down to the size of grains of sand.

  He went farther upstream and saw specimens of still another stone. Theywere colorless but burning with internal fires. He rubbed one of themhard across the ruby he still carried and there was a gritting sound asit cut a deep scratch in the ruby.

  "I'll be damned," he said aloud.

  There was only one stone hard enough to cut a ruby--the diamond.

  * * * * *

  It was almost dark when he returned to where Barber was resting besidetheir packs.

  "What did you find to keep you out so late?" Barber asked curiously.

  He dropped a double handful of rubies, sapphires and diamonds atBarber's feet.

  "Take a look," he said. "On a civilized world what you see there wouldbuy us a ship without our having to lift a finger. Here they're justpretty rocks.

  "Except the diamonds," he added "At least we now have something to cutthose quartz crystals with."

  * * * * *

  They took only a few of the rubies and sapphires the next morning butthey gathered more of the diamonds, looking in particular for thegray-black and ugly but very hard and tough carbonado variety. Then theyresumed their circling of the chasm's walls.

  The heat continued its steady increase as the days went by. Only atnight was there any relief from it and the nights were growing swiftlyshorter as the blue sun rose earlier each morning. When the yellow sunrose the chasm became a blazing furnace around the edge of which theycrept like ants in some gigantic oven.

  There was no life in any form to be seen; no animal or bush or blade ofgrass. There was only the barren floor of the chasm, made a harsh greenshade by the two suns and writhing and undulating with heat waves like anightmare sea, while above them the towering cliffs shimmered, too, andsometimes seemed to be leaning far out over their heads and alreadyfalling down upon them.

  They found no more minerals of any kind and they came at last to theplace where they had seen the smoke or vapor.

  * * * * *

  There the walls of the chasm drew back to form a little valley a milelong by half a mile wide. The walls did not drop vertically to the floorthere but sloped out at the base into a fantastic formation of naturalroofs and arches that reached almost to the center of the valley fromeach side. Green things grew in the shade under the arches and sparklingwaterfalls cascaded down over many of them. A small creek carried thewater out of the valley, going out into the chasm a little way beforethe hot sands absorbed it.

  They stood and watched for some time, but there was no movement in thevalley other than the waving of the green plants as a breeze stirredthem. Once the breeze shifted to bring them the fresh, sweet scent ofgrowing things and urge them to come closer.

  "A place like that doesn't belong here," Barber said in a low voice."But it's there. I wonder what else is there?"

  "Shade and cool water," Humbolt said. "And maybe things that don't likestrangers. Let's go find out."

  They watched warily as they walked, their crossbows in their hands. Atthe closer range they saw that the roofs and arches were the outerremains of a system of natural caves that went back into the valley'swalls. The green vegetation grew wherever the roofs gave part-timeshade, consisting mainly of a holly-leafed bush with purple flowers anda tall plant resembling corn.

  Under some of the roofs the corn was mature, the orange colored grainsvisible. Under others it was no more than half grown. He saw the reasonand said to Barber:

  "There are both warm and cold springs here. The plants watered by thewarm springs would grow almost the year around; the ones watered by thecold springs only in the summer. And what we saw from the mountain topwould have been vapor rising from the warm springs."

  They passed under arch after arch without seeing any life. When theycame to the valley's upper end and still had seen nothing it seemedevident that there was little danger of an encounter with anyintelligent-and-hostile creatures. Apparently nothing at all lived inthe little valley.

  Humbolt stopped under a broad arch where the breeze was made cool andmoist by the spray of water it had come through. Barber went on, to lookunder the adjoining arch.

  Caves led into the wall from both arches and as he stood there Humboltsaw something lying in the mouth of the nearest cave. It was a littlemound of orange corn; lying in a neat pile as though whatever had leftit there had intended to come back after it.

  He looked toward the other arch but Barber was somewhere out of sight.He doubted that whatever had left the corn could be much of amenace--dangerous animals were more apt to eat flesh than corn--but hewent to the cave with his crossbow ready.

  He stopped at the mouth of the cave to let his eyes become accustomed tothe darkness inside it. As he did so the things inside came out to meethim.

  They emerged into full view; six little animals the size of squirrels,each of them a different color. They walked on short hind legs likeminiature bears and the dark eyes in the bear-chipmunk faces were fixedon him with intense interest. They stopped five feet in front of him,there to stand in a neat row and continue the fascinated staring up athim.

  The yellow one in the center scratched absently at its stomach with afurry paw and he lowered the bow, feeling a little foolish at havingbothered to raise it against animals so small and harmless.

  Then he half brought it up again as the yellow one opened its mouth andsaid in a tone that held distinct anticipation:

  "I think we'll eat you for supper."

  He darted glances to right and left but there was nothing near himexcept the six little animals. The yellow one, having spoken, wasstaring silently at him with only curiosity on its furry face. Hewondered if some miasma or some scent from the vegetation in the valleyhad warped his mind into sudden insanity and asked:

  "You think you'll do what?"

  It opened its mouth again, to stutter, "I--I----" Then, with a note ofalarm, _"Hey...."_

  It said no more and the next sound was that of Barber hurrying towardhim and calling, "Hey--Bill--where are you?"

  "Here," he answered, and he was already sure that he knew why the littleanimal had spoken to him.

  Barber came up and saw the six chipmunk-bears. "Six of them!" heexclaimed. "There's one in the next cave--the damned thing spoke to me!"

  "I thought so," he replied. "You told it we'd have it for supper andthen it said, 'You think you'll do what?' didn't it?"

  Barber's face showed surprise. "How did you know that?"

  "They're telepathic between one another," he said. "The yellow one thererepeated what the one you spoke to heard you say
and it repeated whatthe yellow one heard me say. It has to be telepathy between them."

  "Telepathy----" Barber stared at the six little animals, who stared backwith their fascinated curiosity undiminished. "But why should they wantto repeat aloud what they receive telepathically?"

  "I don't know. Maybe at some stage in their evolution only part of themwere telepaths and the telepaths broadcasted danger warnings to theothers that way. So far as that goes, why does a parrot repeat what ithears?"

  There was a scurry of movement behind Barber and another of the littleanimals, a white one, hurried past them. It went to the yellow one andthey stood close together as they stared up. Apparently they weremates....

  "That's the other one--those are the two that mocked us," Barber said,and thereby gave them the name by which they would be known: mockers.

  * * * * *

  The mockers were fresh meat--but they accepted the humans with suchfriendliness and trust that Barber lost all his desire to have one forsupper or for any other time. They had a limited supply of dried meatand there would be plenty of orange corn. They would not go hungry.

  They discovered that the mockers had living quarters in both the coolcaves and the ones warmed by the hot springs. There was evidence thatthey hibernated during the winters in the warm caves.

  There were no minerals in the mockers' valley and they set out tocontinue their circuit of the chasm. They did not get far until the heathad become so great that the chasm's tributaries began going dry. Theyturned back then, to wait in the little valley until the fall rainscame.

  * * * * *

  When the long summer was ended by the first rain they resumed theirjourney. They took a supply of the orange corn and two of the mockers;the yellow one and its mate. The other mockers watched them leave,standing silent and solemn in front of their caves as though they fearedthey might never see their two fellows or the humans again.

  The two mockers were pleasant company, riding on their shoulders andchattering any nonsense that came to mind. And sometimes saying thingsthat were not at all nonsense, making Humbolt wonder if mockers couldpartly read human minds and dimly understand the meaning of some of thethings they said.

  They found a place where saltpeter was very thinly and erraticallydistributed. They scraped off all the films of it that were visible andprocured a small amount. They completed their circuit and reached thefoot of the long, steep slope of the Craigs without finding anythingmore.

  It was an awesome climb that lay before them; up a grade so steep andbarred with so many low ledges that when their legs refused to carrythem farther they crawled. The heat was still very serious and therewould be no water until they came to the spring beyond the mountain'ssummit. A burning wind, born on the blazing floor of the chasm, followedthem up the mountain all day. Their leather canteens were almost drywhen night came and they were no more than a third of the way to thetop.

  The mockers had become silent as the elevation increased and when theystopped for the night Humbolt saw that they would never live to crossthe mountain. They were breathing fast, their hearts racing, as theytried to extract enough oxygen from the thin air. They drank a few dropsof water but they would not touch the corn he offered them.

  The white mocker died at midmorning the next day as they stopped for arest. The yellow one crawled feebly to her side and died a few minuteslater.

  "So that's that," Humbolt said, looking down at them. "The only thingson Ragnarok that ever trusted us and wanted to be our friends--and wekilled them."

  They drank the last of their water and went on. They made dry camp thatnight and dreams of cold streams of water tormented their exhaustedsleep. The next day was a hellish eternity in which they walked and felland crawled and walked and fell again.

  Barber weakened steadily, his breathing growing to a rattling panting.He spoke once that afternoon, to try to smile with dry, swollen lips andsay between his panting gasps, "It would be hell--to have to die--sothirsty like this."

  After that he fell with increasing frequency, each time slower andweaker in getting up again. Half a mile short of the summit he fell forthe last time. He tried to get up, failed, and tried to crawl. He failedat that, too, and collapsed face down in the rocky soil.

  Humbolt went to him and said between his own labored intakes of breath,"Wait, Dan--I'll go on--bring you back water."

  Barber raised himself with a great effort and looked up. "No use," hesaid. "My heart--too much----"

  He fell forward again and that time he was very still, his desperatepanting no more.

  * * * * *

  It seemed to Humbolt that it was half a lifetime later that he finallyreached the spring and the cold, clear water. He drank, the mostecstatic pleasure he had ever experienced in his life. Then the pleasuredrained away as he seemed to see Dan Barber trying to smile and seemedto hear him say, "It would be hell--to have to die--so thirsty likethis."

  He rested for two days before he was in condition to continue on hisway. He reached the plateau and saw that the woods goats had beenmigrating south for some time. On the second morning he climbed up agentle roll in the plain and met three unicorns face to face.

  They charged at once, squealing with anticipation. Had he been equippedwith an ordinary bow he would have been killed within seconds. But theautomatic crossbow poured a rain of arrows into the faces of theunicorns that caused them to swing aside in pain and enragedastonishment. The moment they had swung enough to expose the area justbehind their heads the arrows became fatal.

  One unicorn escaped, three arrows bristling in its face. It watched himfrom a distance for a little while, squealing and shaking its head inbaffled fury. Then it turned and disappeared over a swell in the plain,running like a deer.

  He resumed his southward march, hurrying faster than before. The unicornhad headed north and that could be for but one purpose: to bring enoughreinforcements to finish the job.

  * * * * *

  He reached the caves at night. No one was up but George Ord, workinglate in his combination workshop-laboratory.

  George looked up at the sound of his entrance and saw that he was alone."So Dan didn't make it?" he asked.

  "The chasm got him," he answered. And then, wearily, "The chasm--wefound the damned thing."

  "The red stratum----"

  "It was only iron stains."

  "I made a little pilot smelter while you were gone," George said. "I washoping the red stratum would be ore. The other prospecting parties--noneof them found anything."

  "We'll try again next spring," he said. "We'll find it somewhere, nomatter how long it takes."

  "Our time may not be so long. The observations show the sun to befarther south than ever."

  "Then we'll make double use of the time we do have. We'll cut thehunting parties to the limit and send out more prospecting parties.We're going to have a ship to meet the Gerns again."

  "Sometimes," George said, his black eyes studying him thoughtfully, "Ithink that's all you live for, Bill: for the day when you can killGerns."

  George said it as a statement of a fact, without censure, but Humboltcould not keep an edge of harshness out of his voice as he answered:

  "For as long as I'm leader that's all we're all going to live for."

  He followed the game south that fall, taking with him Bob Craig andyoung Anders. Hundreds of miles south of the caves they came to thelowlands; a land of much water and vegetation and vast herds of unicornsand woods goats. It was an exceedingly dangerous country, due to theconcentration of unicorns and prowlers, and only the automatic crossbowscombined with never ceasing vigilance enabled them to survive.

  There they saw the crawlers; hideous things that crawled on multiplelegs like three-ton centipedes, their mouths set with six mandibles anddripping a stinking saliva. The bite of a crawler was poisonous,instantly paralyzing even to a unicorn, though not instantly killingthem
. The crawlers ate their victims at once, however, ripping thehelpless and still living flesh from its bones.

  Although the unicorns feared the crawlers, the prowlers hated them witha fanatical intensity and made use of their superior quickness to killevery crawler they found; ripping at the crawler until the crawler, inan insanity of rage, bit itself and died of its own poison.

  They had taken one of the powerful longbows with them, in addition totheir crossbows, and they killed a crawler with it one day. As they didso a band of twenty prowlers came suddenly upon them.

  Twenty prowlers, with the advantage of surprise at short range, couldhave slaughtered them. Instead, the prowlers continued on their waywithout as much as a challenging snarl.

  "Now why," Bob Craig wondered, "did they do that?"

  "They saw we had just killed a crawler," Humbolt said. "The crawlers aretheir enemies and I guess letting us live was their way of showingappreciation."

  Their further explorations of the lowlands revealed no minerals--nothingbut alluvial material of unknown depth--and there was no reason to staylonger except that return to the caves was impossible until spring came.They built attack-proof shelters in the trees and settled down to waitout the winter.

  They started north with the first wave of woods goats, nothing but lackof success to show for their months of time and effort.

  When they were almost to the caves they came to the barren valley wherethe Gerns had herded the Rejects out of the cruisers and to the placewhere the stockade had been. It was a lonely place, the stockade wallsfallen and scattered and the graves of Humbolt's mother and all theothers long since obliterated by the hooves of the unicorn legions.Bitter memories were reawakened, tinged by the years with nostalgia,and the stockade was far behind them before the dark mood left him.

  The orange corn was planted that spring and the number of prospectingparties was doubled.

  The corn sprouted, grew feebly, and died before maturity. Theprospecting parties returned one by one, each to report no success. Hedecided, that fall, that time was too precious to waste--they would haveto use the alternate plan he had spoken of.

  He went to George Ord and asked him if it would be possible to build ahyperspace transmitter with the materials they had.

  "It's the one way we could have a chance to leave here without a ship ofour own," he said. "By luring a Gern cruiser here and then taking itaway from them."

  George shook his head. "A hyperspace transmitter _might_ be built, givenenough years of time. But it would be useless without power. It wouldtake a generator of such size that we'd have to melt down every gun,knife, axe, every piece of steel and iron we have. And then we'd be fivehundred pounds short. On top of that, we'd have to have at least threehundred pounds more of copper for additional wire."

  "I didn't realize it would take such a large generator," he said after asilence. "I was sure we could have a transmitter."

  "Get me the metal and we can," George said. He sighed restlessly andthere was almost hatred in his eyes as he looked at the inclosing wallsof the cave. "You're not the only one who would like to leave ourprison. Get me eight hundred pounds of copper and iron and I'll make thetransmitter, some way."

  Eight hundred pounds of metal.... On Ragnarok that was like asking forthe sun.

  The years went by and each year there was the same determined effort,the same lack of success. And each year the suns were farther south,marking the coming of the end of any efforts other than the one tosurvive.

  In the year thirty, when fall came earlier than ever before, he wasforced to admit to himself the bleak and bitter fact: he and the otherswere not of the generation that would escape from Ragnarok. They wereEarth-born--they were not adapted to Ragnarok and could not scour aworld of 1.5 gravity for metals that might not exist.

  And vengeance was a luxury he could not have.

  A question grew in his mind where there had been only his hatred for theGerns before. _What would become of the future generations on Ragnarok?_

  With the question a scene from his childhood kept coming back to him; alate summer evening in the first year on Ragnarok and Julia sittingbeside him in the warm starlight....

  "You're my son, Billy," she had said. "The first I ever had. Now, beforeso very long, maybe I'll have another one."

  Hesitantly, not wanting to believe, he had asked, "What some of themsaid about how you might die then--it won't really happen, will it,Julia?"

  "It ... might." Then her arm had gone around him and she had said, "If Ido I'll leave in my place a life that's more important than mine everwas.

  "Remember me, Billy, and this evening, and what I said to you, if youshould ever be leader. Remember that it's only through the children thatwe can ever survive and whip this world. Protect them while they'resmall and helpless and teach them to fight and be afraid of nothing whenthey're a little older. Never, never let them forget how they came to beon Ragnarok. Someday, even if it's a hundred years from now, the Gernswill come again and they must be ready to fight, for their freedom andfor their lives."

  He had been too young then to understand how truly she had spoken andwhen he was old enough his hatred for the Gerns had blinded him toeverything but his own desires. Now, he could see....

  The children of each generation would be better adapted to Ragnarok andfull adaptation would eventually come. But all the generations of thefuture would be potential slaves of the Gern Empire, free only so longas they remained unnoticed.

  It was inconceivable that the Gerns should never pass by Ragnarokthrough all time to come. And when they finally came the slow,uneventful progression of decades and centuries might have brought afalse sense of security to the people of Ragnarok, might have turned thestories of what the Gerns did to the Rejects into legends and then intomyths that no one any longer believed.

  The Gerns would have to be brought to Ragnarok before that could happen.

  * * * * *

  He went to George Ord again and said:

  "There's one kind of transmitter we could make a generator for--a plainnormal-space transmitter, dot-dash, without a receiver."

  George laid down the diamond cutting wheel he had been working on.

  "It would take two hundred years for the signal to get to Athena at thespeed of light," he said. "Then, forty days after it got there, a Gerncruiser would come hell-bent to investigate."

  "I want the ones of the future to know that the Gerns will be here nolater than two hundred years from now. And with always the chance that aGern cruiser in space might pick up the signal at any time before then."

  "I see," George said. "The sword of Damocles hanging over their heads,to make them remember."

  "You know what would happen to them if they ever forgot. You're as oldas I am--you know what the Gerns did to us."

  "I'm older than you are," George said. "I was nine when the Gerns leftus here. They kept my father and mother and my sister was only three. Itried to keep her warm by holding her but the Hell Fever got her thatfirst night. She was too young to understand why I couldn't help hermore...."

  Hatred burned in his eyes at the memory, like some fire that had beenbanked but had never died. "Yes, I remember the Gerns and what they did.I wouldn't want it to have to happen to others--the transmitter will bemade so that it won't."

  * * * * *

  The guns were melted down, together with other items of iron and steel,to make the castings for the generator. Ceramic pipes were made to carrywater from the spring to a waterwheel. The long, slow job of convertingthe miscellany of electronic devices, many of them broken, into thecomponents of a transmitter proceeded.

  It was five years before the transmitter was ready for testing. It wasearly fall of the year thirty-five then, and the water that gushed fromthe pipe splashed in cold drops against Humbolt as the waterwheel wasset in motion.

  The generator began to hum and George observed the output of it and thetransmitter as registered by the var
ious meters he had made.

  "Weak, but it will reach the Gern monitor station on Athena," he said,"It's ready to send--what do you want to say?"

  "Make it something short," he said. "Make it, _'Ragnarok calling.'_"

  George poised his finger over the transmitting key. "This will setforces in motion that can never be recalled. What we do here thismorning is going to cause a lot of Gerns--or Ragnarok people--to die."

  "It will be the Gerns who die," he said. "Send the signal."

  "Like you, I believe the same thing," George said. "I have to believe itbecause that's the way I want it to be. I hope we're right. It'ssomething we'll never know."

  He began depressing the key.

  * * * * *

  A boy was given the job of operating the key and the signal went outdaily until the freezing of winter stopped the waterwheel that poweredthe generator.

  The sending of the signals was resumed when spring came and theprospecting parties continued their vain search for metals.

  The suns continued moving south and each year the springs came later,the falls earlier. In the spring of forty-five he saw that he would haveto make his final decision.

  By then they had dwindled until they numbered only sixty-eight; theYoung Ones gray and rapidly growing old. There was no longer any use tocontinue the prospecting--if any metals were to be found they were atthe north end of the plateau where the snow no longer melted during thesummer. They were too few to do more than prepare for what the Old Oneshad feared they might have to face--Big Winter. That would require thework of all of them.

  Sheets of mica were brought down from the Craigs, the summits of whichwere deeply buried under snow even in midsummer. Stoves were made offireclay and mica, which would give both heat and light and would bemore efficient than the open fireplaces. The innermost caves wereprepared for occupation, with multiple doors to hold out the cold andwith laboriously excavated ventilation ducts and smoke outlets.

  There were sixty of them in the fall of fifty, when all had been donethat could be done to prepare for what might come.

  * * * * *

  "There aren't many of the Earth-born left now," Bob Craig said to himone night as they sat in the flickering light of a stove. "And therehasn't been time for there to be many of the Ragnarok-born. The Gernswouldn't get many slaves if they should come now."

  "They could use however many they found," he answered. "The youngerones, who are the best adapted to this gravity, would be exceptionallystrong and quick on a one-gravity world. There are dangerous jobs wherea strong, quick slave is a lot more efficient and expendable thancomplex, expensive machines."

  "And they would want some specimens for scientific study," Jim Lakesaid. "They would want to cut into the young ones and see how they'rebuilt that they're adapted to this one and a half gravity world."

  He smiled with the cold mirthlessness that always reminded Humbolt ofhis father--of the Lake who had been the _Constellation_'s lieutenantcommander. "According to the books the Gerns never did try to make it asecret that when a Gern doctor or biologist cuts into the muscles ororgans of a non-Gern to see what makes them tick, he wants them to bestill alive and ticking as he does so."

  Seventeen-year-old Don Chiara spoke, to say slowly, thoughtfully:

  "Slavery and vivisection.... If the Gerns should come now when there areso few of us, and if we should fight the best we could and lose, itwould be better for whoever was the last of us left to put a knife inthe hearts of the women and children than to let the Gerns have them."

  No one made any answer. There was no answer to make, no alternative tosuggest.

  "In the future there will be more of us and it will be different," hesaid at last. "On Earth the Gerns were always stronger and faster thanhumans but when the Gerns come to Ragnarok they're going to find a racethat isn't really human any more. They're going to find a race beforewhich they'll be like woods goats before prowlers."

  "If only they don't come too soon," Craig said.

  "That was the chance that had to be taken," he replied.

  He wondered again as he spoke, as he had wondered so often in the pastyears, if he had given them all their death sentence when he ordered thetransmitter built. Yet, the future generations could not be permitted toforget ... and steel could not be tempered without first thrusting itinto the fire.

  * * * * *

  He was the last of the Young Ones when he awoke one night in the fall offifty-six and found himself burning with the Hell Fever. He did notsummon any of the others. They could do nothing for him and he hadalready done all he could for them.

  He had done all he could for them ... and now he would leave forty-ninemen, women and children to face the unknown forces of Big Winter whileover them hung the sword he had forged; the increasing danger ofdetection by the Gerns.

  The question came again, sharp with the knowledge that it was far toolate for him to change any of it. _Did I arrange the execution of mypeople?_

  Then, through the red haze of the fever, Julia spoke to him out of thepast; sitting again beside him in the summer twilight and saying:

  _Remember me, Billy, and this evening, and what I said to you ... teachthem to fight and be afraid of nothing ... never let them forget howthey came to be on Ragnarok...._

  She seemed very near and real and the doubt faded and was gone. _Teachthem to fight ... never let them forget...._ The men of Ragnarok wereonly fur-clad hunters who crouched in caves but they would grow innumbers as time went by. Each generation would be stronger than thegeneration before it and he had set forces in motion that would bringthe last generation the trial of combat and the opportunity for freedom.How well they fought on that day would determine their destiny but hewas certain, once again, what that destiny would be.

  It would be to walk as conquerors before beaten and humbled Gerns.

  * * * * *

  It was winter of the year eighty-five and the temperature was onehundred and six degrees below zero. Walter Humbolt stood in front of theice tunnel that led back through the glacier to the caves and looked upinto the sky.

  It was noon but there was no sun in the starlit sky. Many weeks beforethe sun had slipped below the southern horizon. For a little while a dimhalo had marked its passage each day; then that, too, had faded away.But now it was time for the halo to appear again, to herald the sun'sreturning.

  Frost filled the sky, making the stars flicker as it swirled endlesslydownward. He blinked against it, his eyelashes trying to freeze to hislower eyelids at the movement, and turned to look at the north.

  There the northern lights were a gigantic curtain that filled a third ofthe sky, rippling and waving in folds that pulsated in red and green,rose and lavender and violet. Their reflection gleamed on the glacierthat sloped down from the caves and glowed softly on the other glacier;the one that covered the transmitter station. The transmitter had longago been taken into the caves but the generator and waterwheel werestill there, frozen in a tomb of ice.

  For three years the glacier had been growing before the caves and theplateau's southern face had been buried under snow for ten years. Only afew woods goats ever came as far north as the country south of the cavesand they stayed only during the brief period between the last snow ofspring and the first snow of fall. Their winter home was somewhere downnear the equator. What had been called the Southern Lowlands was afrozen, lifeless waste.

  Once they had thought about going to the valley in the chasm where themockers would be hibernating in their warm caves. But even if they couldhave gone up the plateau and performed the incredible feat of crossingthe glacier-covered, blizzard-ripped Craigs, they would have found nofood in the mockers' valley--only a little corn the mockers had storedaway, which would soon have been exhausted.

  There was no place for them to live but in the caves or as nomadsmigrating with the animals. And if they migrated to the equator eachyear t
hey would have to leave behind them all the books and tools andeverything that might someday have given them a civilized way of lifeand might someday have shown them how to escape from their prison.

  He looked again to the south where the halo should be, thinking: _Theyshould have made their decision in there by now. I'm their leader--but Ican't force them to stay here against their will. I could only ask themto consider what it would mean if we left here._

  Snow creaked underfoot as he moved restlessly. He saw something lyingunder the blanket of frost and went to it. It was an arrow that someonehad dropped. He picked it up, carefully, because the intense cold hadmade the shaft as brittle as glass. It would regain its normal strengthwhen taken into the caves----

  There was the sound of steps and Fred Schroeder came out of the tunnel,dressed as he was dressed in bulky furs. Schroeder looked to the southand said, "It seems to be starting to get a little lighter there."

  He saw that it was; a small, faint paling of the black sky.

  "They talked over what you and I told them," Schroeder said. "And abouthow we've struggled to stay here this long and how, even if the sunshould stop drifting south this year, it will be years of ice and coldat the caves before Big Spring comes."

  "If we leave here the glacier will cover the caves and fill them withice," he said. "All we ever had will be buried back in there and allwe'll have left will be our bows and arrows and animal skins. We'll betaking a one-way road back into the stone age, for ourselves and ourchildren and their children."

  "They know that," Schroeder said. "We both told them."

  He paused. They watched the sky to the south turn lighter. The northernlights flamed unnoticed behind them as the pale halo of the invisiblesun slowly brightened to its maximum. Their faces were white withnear-freezing then and they turned to go back into the caves. "They hadmade their decision," Schroeder went on. "I guess you and I did them aninjustice when we thought they had lost their determination, when wethought they might want to hand their children a flint axe and say,'Here--take this and let it be the symbol of all you are or all you willever be.'

  "Their decision was unanimous--we'll stay for as long as it's possiblefor us to survive here."

  * * * * *

  Howard Lake listened to Teacher Morgan West read from the diary ofWalter Humbolt, written during the terrible winter of thirty-five yearsbefore:

  _"Each morning the light to the south was brighter. On the seventhmorning we saw the sun--and it was not due until the eighth morning!

  "It will be years before we can stop fighting the enclosure of theglacier but we have reached and passed the dead of Big Winter. We havereached the bottom and the only direction we can go in the future isup._

  "And so," West said, closing the book, "we are here in the caves tonightbecause of the stubbornness of Humbolt and Schroeder and all the others.Had they thought only of their own welfare, had they conceded defeat andgone into the migratory way of life, we would be sitting beside grasscampfires somewhere to the south tonight, our way of life containing noplans or aspirations greater than to follow the game back and forththrough the years.

  "Now, let's go outside to finish tonight's lesson."

  Teacher West led the way into the starlit night just outside the caves,Howard Lake and the other children following him. West pointed to thesky where the star group they called the Athena Constellation blazedlike a huge arrowhead high in the east.

  "There," he said, "beyond the top of the arrowhead, is where we weregoing when the Gerns stopped us a hundred and twenty years ago and leftus to die on Ragnarok. It's so far that Athena's sun can't be seen fromhere, so far that it will be another hundred and fifteen years beforeour first signal gets there. Why is it, then, that you and all the othergroups of children have to learn such things as history, physics, theGern language, and the way to fire a Gern blaster?"

  The hand of every child went up. West selected eight-year-old CliftonHumbolt. "Tell us, Clifton," he said.

  "Because," Clifton answered, "a Gern cruiser might pass by a fewlight-years out at any time and pick up our signals. So we have to knowall we can about them and how to fight them because there aren't verymany of us yet."

  "The Gerns will come to kill us," little Marie Chiara said, her darkeyes large and earnest. "They'll come to kill us and to make slaves outof the ones they don't kill, like they did with the others a long timeago. They're awful mean and awful smart and we have to be smarter thanthey are."

  Howard looked again at the Athena constellation, thinking, _I hope theycome just as soon as I'm old enough to fight them, or even tonight...._

  "Teacher," he asked, "how would a Gern cruiser look if it came tonight?Would it come from the Athena arrowhead?"

  "It probably would," West answered. "You would see its rocket blast,like a bright trail of fire----"

  A bright trail of fire burst suddenly into being, coming from theconstellation of Athena and lighting up the woods and hills and theirstartled faces as it arced down toward them.

  _"It's them!"_ a treble voice exclaimed and there was a quick flurry ofmovement as Howard and the other older children shoved the youngerchildren behind them.

  Then the light vanished, leaving a dimming glow where it had been.

  "Only a meteor," West said. He looked at the line of older children whowere standing protectingly in front of the younger ones, rocks in theirhands with which to ward off the Gerns, and he smiled in the way he hadwhen he was pleased with them.

  Howard watched the meteor trail fade swiftly into invisibility and felthis heartbeats slow from the first wild thrill to gray disappointment.Only a meteor....

  But someday he might be leader and by then, surely, the Gerns wouldcome. If not, he would find some way to make them come.

  * * * * *

  Ten years later Howard Lake was leader. There were three hundred andfifty of them then and Big Spring was on its way to becoming Big Summer.The snow was gone from the southern end of the plateau and once againgame migrated up the valleys east of the caves.

  There were many things to be done now that Big Winter was past and theycould have the chance to do them. They needed a larger pottery kiln, alarger workshop with a wooden lathe, more diamonds to make cuttingwheels, more quartz crystals to make binoculars and microscopes. Theycould again explore the field of inorganic chemistry, even thoughresults in the past had produced nothing of value, and they could,within a few years, resume the metal prospecting up the plateau--themost important project of all.

  Their weapons seemed to be as perfect as was possible but when theGerns came they would need some quick and certain means of communicationbetween the various units that would fight the Gerns. A leader who couldnot communicate with his forces and coordinate their actions would behelpless. And they had on Ragnarok a form of communication, if trained,that the Gerns could not detect or interfere with electronically: themockers.

  The Craigs were still white and impassable with snow that summer but thesnow was receding higher each year. Five years later, in the summer ofone hundred and thirty-five, the Craigs were passable for a few weeks.

  Lake led a party of eight over them and down into the chasm. They tookwith them two small cages, constructed of wood and glass and madeairtight with the strong medusabush glue. Each cage was equipped with asimple air pump and a pressure gauge.

  They brought back two pairs of mockers as interested and trustingcaptives, together with a supply of the orange corn and a large amountof diamonds. The mockers, in their pressure-maintained cages, were noteven aware of the increase in elevation as they were carried over thehigh summit of the Craigs.

  To Lake and the men with him the climb back up the long, steep slope ofthe mountain was a stiff climb to make in one day but no more than that.It was hard to believe that it had taken Humbolt and Barber almost threedays to climb it and that Barber had died in the attempt. It remindedhim of the old crossbows that Humbolt and the others had used. They
werethin, with a light pull, such as the present generation boys used. Itmust have required courage for the old ones to dare unicorn attacks withbows so thin that only the small area behind the unicorn's jaws wasvulnerable to their arrows....

  * * * * *

  When the caves were reached, a very gradual reduction of pressure in themocker cages was started; one that would cover a period of weeks. Onepair of mockers survived and had two young ones that fall. The youngmockers, like the first generation of Ragnarok-born children of manyyears before, were more adapted to their environment than their parentswere.

  The orange corn was planted, using an adaptation method somewhat similarto that used with the mockers. It might have worked had the orange cornnot required such a long period of time in which to reach maturity. Whenwinter came only a few grains had formed.

  They were saved for next year's seeds, to continue the slow adaptationprocess.

  By the fifth year the youngest generation of mockers was well adapted tothe elevation of the caves but for a susceptibility to a quickly fatalform of pneumonia which made it necessary to keep them from exposingthemselves to the cold or to any sudden changes of temperature.

  Their intelligence was surprising and they seemed to be partiallyreceptive to human thoughts, as Bill Humbolt had written. By the end ofthe fifteenth year their training had reached such a stage of perfectionthat a mocker would transmit or not transmit with only the unspokenthought of its master to tell it which it should be. In addition, theywould transmit the message to whichever mocker their master's thoughtdirected. Presumably all mockers received the message but only themocker to whom it was addressed would repeat it aloud.

  They had their method of communication. They had their automaticcrossbows for quick, close fighting, and their long range longbows. Theywere fully adapted to the 1.5 gravity and their reflexes were almostlike those of prowlers--Ragnarok had long ago separated the quick fromthe dead.

  There were eight hundred and nineteen of them that year, in the earlyspring of one hundred and fifty, and they were ready and impatient forthe coming of the Gerns.

  Then the transmitter, which had been in operation again for many years,failed one day.

  George Craig had finished checking it when Lake arrived. He looked upfrom his instruments, remarkably similar in appearance to a sketch ofthe old George Ord--a resemblance that had been passed down to him byhis mother--and said:

  "The entire circuit is either gone or ready to go. It's already operatedfor a lot longer than it should have."

  "It doesn't matter," Lake said. "It's served its purpose. We won'trebuild it."

  George watched him questioningly.

  "It's served its purpose," he said again. "It didn't let us forget thatthe Gerns will come again. But that isn't enough, now. The first signalwon't reach Athena until the year two thirty-five. It will be the deadof Big Winter again then. They'll have to fight the Gerns with bows andarrows that the cold will make as brittle as glass. They won't have achance."

  "No," George said. "They won't have a chance. But what can we do tochange it?"

  "It's something I've been thinking about," he said. "We'll build ahyperspace transmitter and bring the Gerns before Big Winter comes."

  "We will?" George asked, lifting his dark eyebrows. "And what do we usefor the three hundred pounds of copper and five hundred pounds of ironwe would have to have to make the generator?"

  "Surely we can find five hundred pounds of iron somewhere on Ragnarok.The north end of the plateau might be the best bet. As for the copper--Idoubt that we'll ever find it. But there are seams of a bauxite-likeclay in the Western hills--they're certain to contain aluminum to atleast some extent. So we'll make the wires of aluminum."

  "The ore would have to be refined to pure aluminum oxide before it couldbe smelted," George said. "And you can't smelt aluminum ore in anordinary furnace--only in an electric furnace with a generator that cansupply a high amperage. And we would have to have cryolite ore to serveas the solvent in the smelting process."

  "There's a seam of cryolite in the Eastern Hills, according to the oldmaps," said Lake. "We could make a larger generator by melting downeverything we have. It wouldn't be big enough to power the hyperspacetransmitter but it should be big enough to smelt aluminum ore."

  George considered the idea. "I think we can do it."

  "How long until we can send the signal?" he asked.

  "Given the extra metal we need, the building of the generator is asimple job. The transmitter is what will take years--maybe as long asfifty."

  _Fifty years...._

  "Can't anything be done to make it sooner?" he asked.

  "I know," George said. "You would like for the Gerns to come whileyou're still here. So would every man on Ragnarok. But even on Earth thebuilding of a hyperspace transmitter was a long, slow job, with all thematerials they needed and all the special tools and equipment. Herewe'll have to do everything by hand and for materials we have onlybroken and burned-out odds and ends. It will take about fifty years--itcan't be helped."

  Fifty years ... but that would bring the Gerns before Big Winter cameagain. And there was the rapidly increasing chance that a Gern cruiserwould at any day intercept the first signals. They were already morethan halfway to Athena.

  "Melt down the generator," he said. "Start making a bigger one. Tomorrowmen will go out after bauxite and cryolite and four of us will go up theplateau to look for iron."

  * * * * *

  Lake selected Gene Taylor, Tony Chiara and Steve Schroeder to go withhim. They were well on their way by daylight the next morning, on theshoulder of each of them a mocker which observed the activity and newscenes with bright, interested eyes.

  They traveled light, since they would have fresh meat all the way, andcarried herbs and corn only for the mockers. Once, generations before,it had been necessary for men to eat herbs to prevent deficiencydiseases but now the deficiency diseases, like Hell Fever, were unknownto them.

  They carried no compasses since the radiations of the two sunsconstantly created magnetic storms that caused compass needles to swingas much as twenty degrees within an hour. Each of them carried a pairof powerful binoculars, however; binoculars that had been diamond-carvedfrom the ivory-like black unicorn horn and set with lenses and prisms ofdiamond-cut quartz.

  The foremost bands of woods goats followed the advance of spring up theplateau and they followed the woods goats. They could not go ahead ofthe goats--the goats were already pressing close behind the melting ofthe snow. No hills or ridges were seen as the weeks went by and itseemed to Lake that they would walk forever across the endless rollingfloor of the plain.

  Early summer came and they walked across a land that was green andpleasantly cool at a time when the vegetation around the caves would beburned brown and lifeless. The woods goats grew less in number then assome of them stopped for the rest of the summer in their chosenlatitudes.

  They continued on and at last they saw, far to the north, what seemed tobe an almost infinitesimal bulge on the horizon. They reached it twodays later; a land of rolling green hills, scarred here and there withragged outcroppings of rock, and a land that climbed slowly and steadilyhigher as it went into the north.

  They camped that night in a little vale. The floor of it was white withthe bones of woods goats that had tarried too long the fall before andgot caught by an early blizzard. There was still flesh on the bones andscavenger rodents scuttled among the carcasses, feasting.

  "We'll split up now," he told the others the next morning.

  He assigned each of them his position; Steve Schroeder to parallel hiscourse thirty miles to his right, Gene Taylor to go thirty miles to hisleft, and Tony Chiara to go thirty miles to the left of Taylor.

  "We'll try to hold those distances," he said. "We can't look over thecountry in detail that way but it will give us a good general survey ofit. We don't have too much time left by now and we'll make as many milesinto t
he north as we can each day. The woods goats will tell us whenit's time for us to turn back."

  They parted company with casual farewells but for Steve Schroeder, whosmiled sardonically at the bones of the woods goats in the vale andasked:

  "Who's supposed to tell the woods goats?"

  * * * * *

  Tip, the black, white-nosed mocker on Lake's shoulder, kept twisting hisneck to watch the departure of the others until he had crossed the nexthill and the others were hidden from view.

  "All right, Tip," he said then. "You can unwind your neck now."

  "Unwind--all right--all right," Tip said. Then, with a sudden burst ofenergy which was characteristic of mockers, he began to jiggle up anddown and chant in time with his movements, "All right all right allright all right----"

  "Shut up!" he commanded. "If you want to talk nonsense I don't care--butdon't say 'all right' any more."

  "All right," Tip agreed amiably, settling down. "Shut up if you want totalk nonsense. I don't care."

  "And don't slaughter the punctuation like that. You change the meaningentirely."

  "But don't say all right any more," Tip went on, ignoring him. "Youchange the meaning entirely."

  Then, with another surge of animation, Tip began to fish in his jacketpocket with little hand-like paws. "Tip hungry--Tip hungry."

  Lake unbuttoned the pocket and gave Tip a herb leaf. "I notice there'sno nonsensical chatter when you want to ask for something to eat."

  Tip took the herb leaf but he spoke again before he began to eat;slowly, as though trying seriously to express a thought:

  "Tip hungry--no nonsensical."

  "Sometimes," he said, turning his head to look at Tip, "you mockers giveme the peculiar feeling that you're right on the edge of becoming a newand intelligent race and no fooling."

  Tip wiggled his whiskers and bit into the herb leaf. "No fooling," heagreed.

  * * * * *

  He stopped for the night in a steep-walled hollow and built a smallfire of dead moss and grass to ward off the chill that came with dark.He called the others, thinking first of Schroeder so that Tip wouldtransmit to Schroeder's mocker:

  "Steve?"

  "Here," Tip answered, in a detectable imitation of Schroeder's voice."No luck."

  He thought of Gene Taylor and called, "Gene?"

  There was no answer and he called Chiara. "Tony--could you see any ofGene's route today?"

  "Part of it," Chiara answered. "I saw a herd of unicorns over that way.Why--doesn't he answer?"

  "No."

  "Then," Chiara said, "they must have got him."

  "Did you find anything today, Tony?" he asked.

  "Nothing but pure andesite. Not even an iron stain."

  It was the same kind of barren formation that he, himself, had beenwalking over all day. But he had not expected success so soon....

  He tried once again to call Gene Taylor:

  "Gene ... Gene ... are you there, Gene?"

  There was no answer. He knew there would never be.

  * * * * *

  The days became weeks with dismaying swiftness as they penetratedfarther into the north. The hills became more rugged and there wereintrusions of granite and other formations to promise a chance offinding metal; a promise that urged them on faster as their time grewshorter.

  Twice he saw something white in the distance. Once it was the bones ofanother band of woods goats that had huddled together and frozen todeath in some early blizzard of the past and once it was the bones of adozen unicorns.

  The nights grew chillier and the suns moved faster and faster to thesouth. The animals began to migrate, an almost imperceptible movement inthe beginning but one that increased each day. The first frost came andthe migration began in earnest. By the third day it was a hurrying tide.

  Tip was strangely silent that day. He did not speak until the noon sunhad cleared the cold, heavy mists of morning. When he spoke it was togive a message from Chiara:

  "Howard ... last report ... Goldie is dying ... pneumonia...."

  Goldie was Chiara's mocker, his only means of communication--and therewould be no way to tell him when they were turning back.

  "Turn back today, Tony," he said. "Steve and I will go on for a few daysmore."

  There was no answer and he said quickly, "Turn back--turn back!Acknowledge that, Tony."

  "Turning back ..." the acknowledgment came. "... tried to save her...."

  The message stopped and there was a silence that Chiara's mocker wouldnever break again. He walked on, with Tip sitting very small and quieton his shoulder. He had crossed another hill before Tip moved, to pressup close to him the way mockers did when they were lonely and to holdtightly to him.

  "What is it, Tip?" he asked.

  "Goldie is dying," Tip said. And then again, like a soft, sad whisper,"Goldie is dying...."

  "She was your mate.... I'm sorry."

  Tip made a little whimpering sound, and the man reached up to stroke hissilky side.

  "I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm sorry as hell, little fellow."

  * * * * *

  For two days Tip sat lonely and silent on his shoulder, no longerinterested in the new scenes nor any longer relieving the monotony withhis chatter. He refused to eat until the morning of the third day.

  By then the exodus of woods goats and unicorns had dwindled to almostnothing; the sky a leaden gray through which the sun could not be seen.That evening he saw what he was sure would be the last band of woodsgoats and shot one of them.

  When he went to it he was almost afraid to believe what he saw.

  The hair above its feet was red, discolored with the stain ofiron-bearing clay.

  He examined it more closely and saw that the goat had apparently wateredat a spring where the mud was material washed down from an iron-bearingvein or formation. It had done so fairly recently--there were still tinyparticles of clay adhering to the hair.

  The wind stirred, cold and damp with its warning of an approachingstorm. He looked to the north, where the evening had turned the grayclouds black, and called Schroeder:

  "Steve--any luck?"

  "None," Schroeder answered.

  "I just killed a goat," he said. "It has iron stains on its legs it gotat some spring farther north. I'm going on to try to find it. You canturn back in the morning."

  "No," Schroeder objected. "I can angle over and catch up with you in acouple of days."

  "You'll turn back in the morning," he said. "I'm going to try to findthis iron. But if I get caught by a blizzard it will be up to you totell them at the caves that I found iron and to tell them where itis--you know the mockers can't transmit that far."

  There was a short silence; then Schroeder said, "All right--I see. I'llhead south in the morning."

  Lake took a route the next day that would most likely be the one thewoods goats had come down, stopping on each ridge top to study thecountry ahead of him through his binoculars. It was cloudy all day butat sunset the sun appeared very briefly, to send its last rays acrossthe hills and redden them in mockery of the iron he sought.

  Far ahead of him, small even through the glasses and made visible onlybecause of the position of the sun, was a spot at the base of a hillthat was redder than the sunset had made the other hills.

  He was confident it would be the red clay he was searching for and hehurried on, not stopping until darkness made further progressimpossible.

  Tip slept inside his jacket, curled up against his chest, while the windblew raw and cold all through the night. He was on his way again at thefirst touch of daylight, the sky darker than ever and the wind spinningrandom flakes of snow before him.

  He stopped to look back to the south once, thinking, _If I turn back nowI might get out before the blizzard hits._

  Then the other thought came: _These hills all look the same. It I don'tgo to the iron while I'm this close and k
now where it is, it might beyears before I or anyone else could find it again._

  He went on and did not look back again for the rest of the day.

  By midafternoon the higher hills around him were hidden under the cloudsand the snow was coming harder and faster as the wind drove the flakesagainst his face. It began to snow with a heaviness that brought a halfdarkness when he came finally to the hill he had seen through theglasses.

  A spring was at the base of it, bubbling out of red clay. Above it thered dirt led a hundred feet to a dike of granite and stopped. He hurriedup the hillside that was rapidly whitening with snow and saw the vein.

  It set against the dike, short and narrow but red-black with the iron itcontained. He picked up a piece and felt the weight of it. It washeavy--it was pure iron oxide.

  He called Schroeder and asked, "Are you down out of the high hills,Steve?"

  "I'm in the lower ones," Schroeder answered, the words coming a littlemuffled from where Tip lay inside his jacket. "It looks black as hell upyour way."

  "I found the iron, Steve. Listen--these are the nearest to landmarks Ican give you...."

  When he had finished he said, "That's the best I can do. You can't seethe red clay except when the sun is low in the southwest but I'm goingto build a monument on top of the hill to find it by."

  "About you, Howard," Steve asked, "what are your chances?"

  The wind was rising to a high moaning around the ledges of the granitedike and the vein was already invisible under the snow.

  "It doesn't look like they're very good," he answered. "You'll probablybe leader when you come back next spring--I told the council I wantedthat if anything happened to me. Keep things going the way I would have.Now--I'll have to hurry to get the monument built in time."

  "All right," Schroeder said. "So long, Howard ... good luck."

  He climbed to the top of the hill and saw boulders there he could use tobuild the monument. They were large--he might crush Tip against hischest in picking them up--and he took off his jacket, to wrap it aroundTip and leave him lying on the ground.

  He worked until he was panting for breath, the wind driving the snowharder and harder against him until the cold seemed to have penetratedto the bone. He worked until the monument was too high for his numbhands to lift any more boulders to its top. By then it was tall enoughthat it should serve its purpose.

  He went back to look for Tip, the ground already four inches deep insnow and the darkness almost complete.

  "Tip," he called. "Tip--Tip----" He walked back and forth across thehillside in the area where he thought he had left him, stumbling overrocks buried in the snow and invisible in the darkness, calling againstthe wind and thinking, _I can't leave him to die alone here._

  Then, from a bulge he had not seen in the snow under him, there came afrightened, lonely wail:

  _"Tip cold--Tip cold----"_

  He raked the snow off his jacket and unwrapped Tip, to put him insidehis shirt next to his bare skin. Tip's paws were like ice and he wasshivering violently, the first symptom of the pneumonia that killedmockers so quickly.

  Tip coughed, a wrenching, rattling little sound, and whimpered,"Hurt--hurt----"

  "I know," he said. "Your lungs hurt--damn it to hell, I wish I couldhave let you go home with Steve."

  He put on the cold jacket and went down the hill. There was nothingwith which he could make a fire--only the short half-green grass,already buried under the snow. He turned south at the bottom of thehill, determining the direction by the wind, and began the stubbornmarch southward that could have but one ending.

  He walked until his cold-numbed legs would carry him no farther. Thesnow was warm when he fell for the last time; warm and soft as itdrifted over him, and his mind was clouded with a pleasant drowsiness.

  _This isn't so bad_, he thought, and there was something like surprisethrough the drowsiness. _I can't regret doing what I had to do--doing itthe best I could...._

  Tip was no longer coughing and the thought of Tip was the only one thatwas tinged with regret: _I hope he wasn't still hurting when he died._

  He felt Tip still very feebly against his chest then, and he did notknow if it was his imagination or if in that last dreamlike state it wasTip's thought that came to him; warm and close and reassuring him:

  _No hurt no cold now--all right now--we sleep now...._