Hal Clement - Cycle of Fire

There were, of course, many reasons why the world might be more active seismically than Earth. It was larger, for one thing — ninety-one hundred miles in diameter and forty per cent more massive, so that a one hundred seventy pound man weighed about one hundred eighty on its surface. The percentage difference was small, but the total tonnage of gravitational forces available for orogeny was much larger than on mankind’s home world. At any rate there was the evidence — mountain-building periods were short, frequent, and local.

This should have made the biology department happy, even though it promised trouble for the astronomers. Unfortunately the vertebrate fossils had produced another headache.

It had not proved difficult to set up a general sequence almost certainly corresponding to the course of evolution on the planet, spanning what must have been several hundred million years, if Earth could serve as an example. This sequence started with things just barely possessed of hard-enough interior parts to preserve, ran through bony creatures comparable to the fishes, and led eventually to legged creatures which quite obviously breathed air and spent their lives, or most of them, on dry land. It would have been nice to have been able to put the simple end of this series at the bottom of a page and Dar Lang Ahn at the top, with logically intermediate forms in between, but this was rendered impossible by the fact that every fossil vertebrate found that was possessed of bony limbs at all had six of them. Dar was sufficiently human to have two arms and two legs, with no visible trace of any others.

At the biologists’ urgent plea the native submitted to having a set of X-ray photographs made of himself. He was as interested as anyone in looking at the results, and was as able as any biologist to see that his skeleton bore no traces of a third pair of appendages.

Dar by now was as familiar with the general principles of evolution as the average educated human being and could see why the professionals were bothered. Even before anyone had asked he commented, “It looks as though nothing you’ve found in the rocks could be a direct ancestor of my race. I suppose we might have come from some other world, as Nils once thought, but there is nothing in any book I have ever read, or that any Teacher has ever told me, to suggest such a thing.”

“That spikes that one,” remarked the biologist sadly.

“Not entirely; it is quite possible that it happened so long ago that either we kept no records or they have been lost in the meantime. However, I’m afraid it will be a little difficult to prove.”

“You’re probably right. I think one thing that had better be done is to look for definitely recent formations.”

The geologists had listened to this conversation; it took place during one of the regular breaks for meals. One of them now spoke up.

“It’s a little hard to look at a formation casually and say, ‘this is less than a million years old.’ We’re keeping our eyes open, of course, but you know perfectly well that dating comes afterward — after excavation, and finding fossils and comparing them with other formations.”

“How about unconsolidated material on talus slopes or in caves?”

“Hardly our field, but we’ll bore into any we find. I’m not sure I recall any really well-developed cave country, though some of these limestone layers might furnish the makings if the climate cooperated.”

“I have heard of caves on some of the other continents in which strange diagrams and drawings could be seen on the walls,” offered Dar Lang Ahn. The party turned toward him as one.

“Can you take us there?” Several voices asked the question almost simultaneously.

“Maybe. It would be safer if we went to one of the cities on that continent and had one of the local people act as guide.”

So it was arranged, after consulting with Commander Burke on the distant Alphard . Another flier was sent down to take the small party, so that the geologists would not be deprived of a means of travel, and several more specialists came down with the new vessel.

The continent in question lay far to the south and west of the place where the work had been going on but was still under the light of red Theer. Dar Lang Ahn found a city without difficulty and, after the usual explanations which sight of the human beings required, was able to obtain a guide. Actually, many of the citizens chose to come along to see the strangers at work; there was little of importance to be done, since all the books of this particular city had been taken to the Ice Ramparts and the people were simply awaiting death.

The caves were precisely as Dar had described; there was no doubt in the minds of any of the men that they had been inhabited by beings in the dawn of a civilization. Most of the visitors were attracted by the pictures on the walls, which Dar had mentioned, but those who knew what they were doing set to work with extreme care on the floors.

These were covered with hard-packed earth, which was carefully removed, layer by layer, and sifted for anything that might be present. The natives commented freely on everything that came to light; they had never thought of digging there themselves and apparently did not recognize any of the objects that were found. These might just as well have come from a similar cavern on Earth — tools of stone and bone and objects which might have been ornaments.

For days the digging went on. The scientists had hoped in the beginning that skeletons of the inhabitants might turn up, but they were disappointed. One of them mentioned this to Dar.

“It’s not too surprising,” the native answered. “I can see that these people lived in a way different from ours, but it can’t have been that different. They either died at the proper time and left no trace, or died by violence, and that would hardly have happened in the caves here.”

“We don’t really know that it was people like yours who lived here,” answered one of the scientists drily. “Somewhere in the history of this planet of yours there seems to be a big break. I might have suspected that your people came from another planet and the ‘hot’ ones were native to Abyormen, if we didn’t know about the father-son relationship you have with them.”

“Perhaps we both did,” suggested Dar. The biologist brightened.

“That’s a possibility. I wish the people who lived in these caves had drawn a picture or two of themselves.”

“How do you know they didn’t?” The scientist looked up at the weird creatures whose images sprawled across the limestone walls and ceilings.

“I don’t,” he said sadly. “You would bring that up. At least none of them are six-limbed, which at least suggests the animal life at the time this cave was inhabited was more closely related to you than what we found in the rocks can have been.”

The scientist went back to his work, and Dar Lang Ahn, for the first time since Kruger had known him, went off by himself. He saw the boy looking after him and called back with his equivalent of a smile, “Don’t worry, I just want to be alone for a while. I have a lot of thinking to do. Don’t be afraid to call me if anything exciting happens.”

Kruger felt relieved but was not quite sure what would be listed as exciting by his little friend. At first, after the arrival of the Alphard , virtually everything had seemed to qualify; the native had difficulty in keeping his attention on one thing at a time, since everything in his vicinity demanded examination. As time went on that tendency had disappeared. Kruger wondered whether Dar could possibly be losing the interest in the sciences which the boy had been trying to develop. He decided that the risk was slight; this work was getting a trifle boring, even for Kruger. It had long since passed the point where every new fossil, flint knife, or piece of limestone added noticeably to their fund of knowledge.