And he was right. He was astonishingly right. Next dawn revealed what he predicted, and Yockerbow decided—though he could not convince Arranth he was correct in saying so—that among Barratong’s chief gifts must be the art of assessing whether someone who relayed a story to him told the truth.
For their course came to a dead end in a wide bay whose northern shores were still blocked off by a huge glacier. Some drifts of mist hung about it, but it was a fine morning and a brisk wind disposed of most of them within an hour.
And, either side of the steep bluish mass of ice, life was returning. Not only were the drab gray sand-slopes nearby aweb with creepers and punctuate with burrowers: the air was full of unexpected wingets. The mariners caught as many as they could, for some were known to lay maggors which infested junqs, and brought them to Barratong for examination.
“They’re unlike any in the south,” he stated. “Even if they are similar, then the colors vary, or the size, or the limb-structure. Is the Fleet still thriving?”
“As ever!” came the enthusiastic report. “We didn’t expect to fare so well this far north, but the junqs’ maws are crammed and we ourselves enjoy the food we reap from the sea!”
“Then here’s our landfall, and our harvest will be knowledge!” cried the admiral. “Report to me whatever you find unusual—”
Something shot past him with a whizzing sound. A moment later, Ulgrim, who stood nearby, cursed and clapped a claw to his upper mantle. Withdrawing it, he displayed a pointed object with a pair of vanes on the after end. Similar noises continued, and complaints resounded from all the nearby junqs.
“What in the world—?” began Yockerbow, but Arranth cut him short.
“Those must be seeds!” she exclaimed. “Did you never play the game we did as younglings—placing seeds like those on a rock and shining sunlight on them through a burning-glass until they flew away?”
Once again Yockerbow found himself at an embarrassing loss. When he was a youngling, he had known nothing of such miracles as lenses, or indeed any form of glass. Attempting to recoup his pressure, he said, “You mean heat bursts them?”
“Burst? Not in the sense a bladder bursts, dear me! They emit some sort of stinking gas from one end, and that makes them leap through the air.”
All this time, a horde of the things was descending on them, and Barratong—who else?—was reasoning about the strange phenomenon.
“They must be coining from up there,” he said, and pointed to a bluff a little above their own level, where a dark shadow was growing more and more visible as ice melted and water cascaded down the lower rocks. “That’s where we’ll send explorers first. A sign of life is never to be overlooked.”
“And the top of that bluff,” said Arranth in high excitement, “would be just right to set up the telescope I brought! That is,” she added hastily, “if the dark-time is as clear as this morning, and weather-sense indicates it may be.”
Exuding an aura of puzzlement, Barratong said, “I fear you’re right.”
“Fear?”—from two or three voices simultaneously.
“Our whole voyage has been strange,” the admiral said after a brief hesitation. “Too fair weather—no storms to mention—the bergs dissolving as we passed by … There is a real change taking place in the world, and it disturbs me. We must seize our chance, though! Overside with you!”
The Fleet having been instructed to make all secure, a small group of crewmen was detailed to follow Ulgrim and find a way to the cliff-top where the telescope might be sited. Meantime Barratong, Yockerbow, and Arranth, who was too impatient to concern herself with preparatory details, set off along a sloping miniature watercourse towards the source of the flying seeds. Its bed was pebbly, and the flow chilled their pads, but they were able to obtain a good grip on the gradient, and shortly they found themselves looking at a shadow behind a veil of ice.
“Now there’s a cave!” declaimed the admiral, loudly enough to overcome the rushing of streamlets which was greeting the advent of renewed summer. (Had there been one last year? It seemed unlikely; Yockerbow was prepared to believe that Barratong’s weather-sense had picked the very first possible year for folk to return to these latitudes.) “What icefaw or what snowbelong may have laired here! What refuge it may have offered to beasts we exterminated when the Freeze drove them southward! You realize, of course”—lapsing into his most condescending and didactic mode—”that up here there may still be creatures which cannot live off vegetation but devour other animals, as sharqs eat other fish?”