The trolls have erected a huge barrier down the spine of the isthmus. Carefully calculated to be just tall enough to preclude passage to the largest of the serpents, this oppressive barrier allows the lovely bluenecked creatures, if they strain, to sense one another at close range but not to touch. The nights of the great tide are extremely painful to watch. From both sides the serpents hurl themselves repeatedly and ineffectually at the wall, trying desperately to make contact with their mates. But it is all in vain. The barrier holds. The serpents are unable to mate. Both sexes return eventually to their respective oceans, deeply saddened and profoundly aware of the implications of the barrier for their future.
Some of the serpents batter themselves nearly senseless as they try to break down the wall. These wounded ones on both sides of the isthmus remain behind to recover while the rest of the species, resuming the annual migration as if the normal mating had indeed taken place, slowly and sadly swim away, each sex heading for a separate reach of Canthor.
It is two nights after the great tide has stopped submerging the land between the oceans. Two older male serpents, their necks still bruised from the repeated bootless hammerings against the hated barrier, are swimming slowly together in the moonlight. A strange light in the sky comes swiftly upon them from above. It hovers over the serpents, seeming to spotlight them as they crane their necks to see what is happening.
In a moment the graceful necks keel forward and slap down upon the moonlit ocean. From out of the light above them comes an object, a basket of some kind, that descends to the water. The two serpents are scooped up, lifted silently out of the sea into the air, reeled in by some unknown fisherman in the sky above them. The same scene repeats a dozen times, first in the western ocean with the wounded serpents whose necks are cobalt blue, then in the eastern ocean with their pale blue counterparts. It is as if a great roundup is taking place, removing all the exhausted serpents who had been unable to take their place with the rest of the species in the annual migration.
Far above Canthor a gigantic cylindrical spaceship awaits the return of its robot minions. Twenty miles on a side, this traveling planet opens itself to a fleet of returning vehicles the size of large airplanes that bring back the quarry from Canthor. The cylinder rotates slowly as Canthor and its giant moon shine in the background. A solo laggard vehicle returns a door opens to receive it in the back of the larger craft, and for a while there is no more activity. At length the cylinder tips over on its side and fires several small rockets. It is out of sight in seconds, departing Canthor for other worlds.
The snow falls steadily on the huge man trudging silently through the forest. Clad in skins, carrying a heavy load on his back and a large spear in one hand, he turns his hairy, unkempt face toward the others behind him, his family, and grunts at them to hurry. There are five altogether, an infant carried by the woman and two teenage children. The teenagers are wearing skins like their parents and have large bundles slung across their backs. The teenage boy is also carrying a spear. At close distance all of them look very weary, almost exhausted.
They break free from the forest for a moment and enter a meadow that surrounds a frozen pond. The snow continues to fall, adding to the three inches that already cover the ground. The father motions to his family to stop and approaches the pond gingerly. As the others huddle together against the cold, the man takes a crude tool from his bundle and, after brushing the snow off the surface of the pond in a small area, begins to cut the ice. Almost an hour passes. Finally he succeeds, utters a grunt of happiness, and bends down to drink the water. He pulls out a skin, fills it, and brings the water to his wife and children.
The teenage daughter smiles at her father, a smile of love and admiration, as he offers her the water. Her face is tired, etched with the lines of sun and wind and cold. She reaches up to take the skin. Suddenly her face contorts with fear, she screams, and her father turns just in time to protect himself from a snarling wolf, midair in an attack. He strikes the wolf full force with his powerful arm, knocking it away from its target, and then stumbles toward his spear on the ground beside the pond. He grabs the spear and turns around quickly, prepared to defend his family.
Three wolves have attacked them. His son has deftly impaled one of the wolves through the midriff with his spear, but now a second wolf has pinioned the boy, defenseless in the snow, before he has been able to withdraw his weapon and strike again. In a frenzy, the father jumps forward and thrusts his spear into the wolf attacking his son. But it is too late. The hungry wolf had already found the boy’s throat, severing the jugular vein with one quick snap of his powerful jaws.
Whirling around, the caveman moves against the last of the wolves. His wife lies bleeding in the snow and his infant child is unprotected, screaming in its wrappings some twenty feet from the mother. The last wolf, wary of the huge man, feints an attack against the father and then leaps for the baby. Before the man can respond, the wolf has grabbed the baby by its clothes and headed off for the forest.
The young girl was spared physical injury in the attack but was devastated by the near instant death of her brother and the disappearance of her tiny sister. She holds her dead brother’s hand and sobs uncontrollably. The father stuffs virgin snow in the wife’s wounds and then lifts her upon his back along with the heavy bundles. He grunts a couple of times to his daughter and she finally, reluctantly, picks herself up and starts gathering what remains of the family’s things into another bundle.
As night falls the three surviving members of the family are approaching some caves at the edge of the forest. The father is near exhaustion from the weight of his wife and the family’s meager belongings. He sits down to rest for a moment. His daughter stumbles down beside him, placing her head in his lap. She cries silently and her father tenderly wipes away her tears. A bright light suddenly shines down on them from above and an instant later all three are unconscious.
A tethered metallic basket about fifteen feet long and five feet wide descends in the eerie snowy light and comes to rest softly on the ground beside the three humans. The sides of the basket drop and metal belts extend themselves outward, wrapping around each of the people. They are pulled into the basket, the sides of the basket are closed, and the strange object then ascends into the snowy night. Seconds later the spotlight disappears and life returns to normal in the prehistoric forest.
Above the Earth the giant cylinder sits quietly, waiting for its messengers to return. The planet below is nearly cloudless and the great blue stretches of ocean tremble like jewels in the reflected sunlight. Near the evening terminator, the low sun angles show a vast expanse of ice extending down from the North Pole, covering almost all of a large continent. To the west, across a great ocean and an all white northern island, the midday sun shines on another large continent. It is also mostly covered by ice. Here the ice extends southward across two thirds of the land mass and only disappears completely as the continent begins to taper and the southern sea is reached.
The hunting shuttles sent out from the great cylinder return to their base and unload their prey. The father, injured mother, and teenage daughter are inside the small shuttle craft along with fifty to sixty other humans, obviously selected from disparate points around the world. None of the humans is moving. After the shuttle safely docks with the mother ship, all the prehistoric humans are moved in a large van to a receiving station. Here they are admitted and catalogued, and then taken inside a vast module that re-creates the environment of Earth.
Far above the Earth, the last of the drone scouts returns to the giant cylinder. There is a momentary pause, as if some unknown checklist were being verified, and then the cylindrical space vehicle disappears.
THURSDAY
1
THEY were there on the beach at sunrise. Sometime during the night seven whales had run aground at Deer Key, five miles east of Key West. The powerful leviathans of the deep, ten to fifteen feet long, looked helpless as they lay floundering on the sand. Another half dozen members of this misguided pod of false killer whales were swimming in circles in the shallow lagoon just off the beach, obviously lost and confused.