glow bright once again. Finally that glow erupted into the flame
that had swept all before it on Minerva; they emerged as an
adversary more fearsome and more formidable than anything the Earth
had ever known. The Neanderthals never stood a chance-they were
doomed the moment the first Lunarian foot made contact with the
soil of Earth.
“The outcome you see all around you today. We stand undisputed
masters of the Solar System and poised on the edge of interstellar
space itself, just as they did fifty thousand years ago.”
Danchekker placed his glass carefully on the table and moved slowly
toward the center of the room. His sober gaze shifted from eye to
eye. He concluded: “And so, gentlemen, we inherit the stars.
“Let us go out, then, and claim our inheritance. We belong to a
tradition in which the concept of defeat has no meaning. Today the
stars and tomorrow the galaxies. No force exists in the Universe
that can stop us.”
epilogue
Professor Hans Jacob Zeiblemann, of the Department of Paleontology
of the University of Geneva, finished his entry for the day in his
diary, closed the book with a grunt, and returned it to its place
in the tin box underneath his bed. He hoisted his twohundred-pound
bulk to its feet and, drawing his pipe from the breast pocket of
his bush shirt, moved a pace across the tent to knock out the ash
on the metal pole by the~ door. As he stood packing a new fill of
tobacco into the bowl, he gazed out over the arid landscape of
northern Sudan.
The Sun had turned into a deep gash just above the horizon, oozing
blood-red liquid rays that drenched the naked rock for miles
around. The tent was one of three that stood crowded together on a
narrow sandy shelf. The shelf was formed near the bottom of a
steep-sided rocky valley, dotted with clumps of coarse bush and
desert scrub that clustered together along the valley floor and
petered out rapidly, without gaining the slopes on either side. On
a wider shelf beneath stood the more numerous tents of the native
laborers. Obscure odors wafting upward from this direction signaled
that preparation of the evening meals had begun. From farther below
came the perpetual sound of the stream, rushing and clattering and
jostling on its way to join the waters of the distant Nile.
The crunch of boots on gravel sounded nearby. A few seconds later
Zeiblemann’s assistant, Jorg Hutfauer, appeared, his shirt dark and
streaked with perspiration and grime.
“Phew!” The newcomer halted to mop his brow with something that had
once been a handkerchief. “I’m whacked. A beer, a bath, dinner,
then bed-that’s my program for tonight.”
Zeiblemann grinned. “Busy day?”
“Haven’t stopped. We’ve extended sector five to the lower terrace.
The subsoil isn’t too bad there at all. We’ve made quite a bit of
progress.”
“Anything new?”
“I brought these up-thought you might be interested. There’s more
below, but it’ll keep till you come down tomorrow.” Hutfauer passed
across the objects he had been carrying and continued on into the
tent to retrieve a can of beer from the pile of boxes and cartons
under the table.
“Mmm . . .” Zeiblemann turned the bone over in his hand. “Human
femur . . . heavy.” He studied the unusual curve and measured the
proportions with his eye. “Neanderthal, I’d say.
or very near related.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The professor placed the fossil carefully in a tray, covered it
with a cloth, and laid the tray on the chest standing just inside
the tent doorway. He picked up a hand-sized blade of ifint, simply
but effectively worked by the removal of long, thin flakes.
“What did you make of this?” he asked.
Hutfauer moved forward out of the shadow and paused to take a
prolonged and grateful drink from the can.
“Well, the bed seems to be late Pleistocene, so I’d expect upper
Paleolithic indications-which fits in with the way it’s been
worked. Probably a scraper for skinning. There are areas of
microliths on the handle and also around the end of the blade.
Bearing in mind the location, I’d put it at something related