coloured pencils

"Fishing once more? "coloured pencils coloured pencilstcoloured pencilse 128 .In using this system, absentee voters werecoloured pencils instructed to mark their ballots with number two pencils. The optical scanner rejected ballots which were marked withcoloured pencils instruments other than number two pencil. 2006, Barbara Slater Stern, curriculum and teaching dialogue: V. 8, page 33."Mrs. Landry, I forgot to bring my number two pencils! Does that mean I flunk this test?" It was just as well that no one dreamed that another two years would pass before the book was finally published, by New American Library in the summer of 1968 -months after the release of the movie. In the long run, everything came out all right-exactly as Stanley had predicted.

But I can think of easier ways of earning a living.

THE DAWN OF MAN

During November 1950 I wrote a short story about a meeting in the remote past between visitors from space and a primitive ape-man. An editor at Ballantine Books gave it the ingenious title "Expedition to Earth" when it was published in the book of that name, but I prefer "Encounter in the Dawn." However, when Harcourt, Brace and World brought out my own selection of favorites, The Nine Billion Names of God, it was mysteriously changed to "Encounter at Dawn." There the matter rests at present.

Though "Encounter" was not one of the half-dozen stories originally purchased by Stanley, it greatly influenced my thinking during the early stages of our enterprise. At that time-and indeed until very much later-we assumed that we would actually show some type of extraterrestrial entity, probably not too far from the human pattern. Even this presented frightful problems of makeup and credibility.

The make-up problems could be solved-as Stuart Freeborn later showed with his brilliant work on the ape-men. (To my fury, at the 1969 Academy Awards a special Oscar was presented for make-up to Planet of the Apes! I wondered, as loudly as possible, whether the judges had passed over 2001 because they thought we used real apes.) The problem of credibility might be much greater, for there was danger that the result might look like yet another monster movie. After a great deal of experimenting the whole issue was sidestepped, both in the movie and the novel, and there is no doubt that this was the correct solution.

But before we arrived at it, it seemed reasonable to show an actual meeting between ape-men and aliens, and to give far more details of that encounter in the Pleistocene, three million years ago. The chapters that follow were our first straightforward attempt to show how apemen might be trained, with patience, to improve their way of life.

It was part of Stanley's genius that he spottedcoloured pencils what was missing in this approach. It was coloured pencilstoo simpleminded; worse than that, it lacked the magic he was seeking, as he explained in item 24 of his memorandum, quoted earlier.

In the novel, we were finally able to get the effect we wanted by cutting out the details and introducing the super-teaching machine, the monolith-which, even more important, provided the essential linking theme between the different sections of the story. In the film, Stanley was able to produce a far more intense emotional effect by the brilliant use of slow-motion photography, extreme closeups, and Richard Strauss's Zarathustra. That frozen moment at the beginning of history, when Moon-Watcher, foreshadowing Cain, first picks up the bone and studies it thoughtfully, before waving it to and fro with mounting excitement, never fails to bring tears to my eyes.

And it hit me hardest of all when I was sitting behind U Thant and Dr. Ralph Bunche in the Dag Hammarskjold Theater, watching a screening which we had arranged at the Secretary General's request. This, I suddenly realized, is where all the trouble started-and this very building is where we are trying to stop it. Simultaneously, I was struck by the astonishing parallel between the shape of the monolith and the UN Headquarters itself; there seemed something quite uncanny about the coincidence. If it is one....

The skull-smashing sequence was the only scene not filmed in the studio; it was shot in a field, a couple of hundred yards away-the only time Stanley went on location. A small platform had been set up, and MoonWatcher (Dan Richter) was sitting on this, surrounded by bones. Cars and buses were going by at the end of the field, but as this was a low-angle shot against the sky they didn't get in the way-though Stanley did have to pause for an occasional airplane.

The shot was repeated so many times, and Dan smashed so many bones, that I was afraid we were going to run out of wart-hog (or tapir) skulls. But eventually Stanley was satisfied, and as we walked back to the studio he began to throw bones up in the air. At first I thought this was sheer joi de vivre, but then he started to film them with a hand-held camera-no easy task. Once or twice, one of the large, swiftly descending bones nearly impacted on Stanley as he peered through the viewfinder; if luck had been against us the whole project might have ended then. To misquote Ardrey (page 34), "That intelligence would have perished on some forgotten Elstree field."

When he had finished filming the bones whirling against the sky, Stanley resumed the walk back to the studio; but now he had got hold of a broom, and started tossing that up into the air. Once again, I assumed this exercise was pure fun; and perhaps it was. But that was the genesis of the longest flash-forward in the history of movies-three million years, from bone club to artificial satellite, in a twenty-fourth of a second.

[At one time we had intended not a flash-forward but a flashback; I had quite forgotten this, until I noticed thacoloured pencilst the four chapters that follow were originally numbered 35 to 38. It seems more logical, and certainly less confusing, to reproduce them here, so giving this book the same structure as the novel-and the movie.]

FIRST ENCOUNTER

The glaciers had retreated now, and the shapes of the continents were much as Man would know them, when he made his first maps three millions years hence. There were, of course, minor differences, the British Isles still formed part of Europe, and the causeway between Asia and America had not yet crumbled into the islands of the Bering Strait. And the Mediterranean valley was still unflooded; the Pillars of Hercules would stand fast for ages yet, before the ocean broke through and the false, sweet legend of Atlantis was born.

And just what creatures will this world hold? asked Clindar as he looked down upon the turning globe. The great ship had come through the Star Gate only a few hours before, and the excitement of planetfall was still upon all its crew. Every world was a new challenge, a new problem, with its endless possibilities of life and death- and its hope of companionship in this still achingly empty universe.

In the five centuries since he had left Eos, Clindar had walked on thirty worlds, and devoted at least ten years of his life to each. On two he had suffered minor deaths, but this was one of the inevitable hazards of exploration. He expected to die many times again before he returned to his native world, now a thousand light-years away in normal space. As long as his body was not totally destroyed, the doctors could always repair it.

Apart from their unusual height-more than seven feet- the creatures looking down upon the world of the Pliocene were strikingly human; far more human, indeed, than anything that yet walked on the planet below. Only if one examined them in detail was it obvious that they belonged to an entirely different evolutionary tree; Nature had rung the changes once again on one of her favorite designs.

There are millions of two-armed, upright, biped races in the universe. Thousands of them, on a dark night or in a thick fog, might be mistaken for human beings. But there are only a few hundred species who could mingle undetected in the society of man-and none at all that could pass even the most superficial medical examination.

With a little plastic surgery, Clindar could have passed as a man. He was hairless, and there were no nails on his six fingers and toes; these stigmata of the primitive jungle his race had lost eons ago. Despite his size, he moved swiftly, with a jerky, almost avian walk and rhythm. He thought and spoke more quickly than any man would ever do, and his normal body temperature was almost 105 degrees. His skeleton and his biochemistry were utterly inhuman, and any cannibals foolish enough to feast upon his flesh would surely die. Yet despite all this, one would have to search a million worlds to find a closer approximation to a man.

And, like Man, he and his companions were insatiably inquisitive. Now that they had the power to explore the universe, they would enjoy it to the full.

The maps, the photographic surveys, the spectrochemical analyses, were all completed. After a year in orbit, it was time to land. Like a stick of bombs, ten glittering spheres were ejected from the thousand-foot-long mother ship, and fell toward the cloud-wrapped globe below.

They drifted apart, spread themselves out along the equator, and settled gently on mountain, plain, and swamp. Clindar and his two companions floated for miles across the jungles before they saw a good landing place; then the sphere extended its three telescopic legs and came to rest as delicately as a falling soap bubble, upon the land that would one day be named Africa.

For a moment no one spokecoloured pencils; each wanted to savor this moment in silence. The three of them, as was usually the case on such expeditions, were all members of the same mating group, so neither their bodies nor their minds held any secrets from each other. This was their fifth landing together, and silence united them more closely than any words.

At last, Clindar touched the control panel, and into the cabin came the sounds of the new world. For a long time they listened to the voices of the forest, to the sighing of the wind through the strange trees and grasses, to the cries of animals killing or being killed-and a changeless background of muted thunder, the roar of the great waterfall two miles away. One day they would know every thread in this tapestry of sound; but now it was full of menace, and woke forgotten fears. For all their wisdom and sophistication, they felt like children facing the unknown terrors of the night; and their hearts ached for home.

The familiar routines of the landing procedure soon coloured pencilsturned them back into calm, professional explorer scientists. First the little collection robots were sent rolling in all directions, to gather leaves and grasses and, with luck, any small animals slow-moving enough to be caught. All the samples they brought back were examined in the scoutship's sealed and automatic lab, so that there was no danger of contamination. The biochemical patterns were swiftly evaluated-it was rare to find a wholly novel one, especially on an oxygen-carbon world like this-and the information flashed up to the hovering mother ship, twenty thousand miles away. There seemed to be no virulently hostile microorganisms here, but life was of such infinite complexity that one could never be sure. Planets could produce deadly surprises, generations after they had been declared completely safe.

No large animals came near the ship during the hours of daylight which was not surprising, for it stood in several acres of open ground where the only cover was a few low bushes. But at dusk, the picture changed, and the land became alive as the shadows lengthened and deepened into night.

To the watchers on the ship, darkness was no handicap. Through the infrared periscope they could see the world around them as if it were still daylight; they could follow the shy herbivores on their way to the waterholes, and could study the tactics of the great predators who hunted them. There were still tigers in this land, with twin sabers jutting from their jaws; but in another million years they would be gone, and Africa would belong to the lion.

It was slow, sometimes exasperating, but always fascinating work-making a census of a world one could not touch. Several times Clindar moved the ship a few miles to change the vantagepoint, and to make sure that the animals and plants formed a representative sample. And in the second week, they found the hominids. It was the din through the long-distance microphones that drew attention to them. As Clindar swung the periscope in the direction of the uproar, he found that his view of the disturbance was partly blocked by trees, but he could see enough to make it unnecessary to move the ship.

About half a mile away, in a small clearing near the bank of an almost dried-up river, a leopard had made a kill. It was crouched over some unfortunate victim who had presumably been drinking at the water's edge, and was snarling angrily at a hostile chorus from the surrounding trees. There were dark, shadow animals of fair size moving through the branches of those trees, and it was some time before Clindar could get a good view of one. But suddenly, as he tracked through the foliage, he came upon a clear line of sight-and looked straight into a hairy caricature of his own face.

The creature was screaming with rage as it danced up and down on the tree limb, directing its fury at the leopard. On other branches, its companions were doing the same, and though they could not harm the killer they were obviously annoying it, for presently the big cat started to move away, dragging the bloody carcass of its victim by the leg. As the body rolled over, Clindar found himself once again looking into the distorting mirror of time.

He had seen the reconstructions of his own ancestors, five or ten million years ago; the mask now stiffening into a grimace of death might have belonged to any one of them. There was the same low, ridged forehead, close-set eyes, muscular but chinless jaw, protruding teeth. It was not the first time he had met this pattern, for variations of it were common on many worlds, yet it always filled him with wonder, and with a sense of kinship that spanned the evolutionary gulfs.

The leopard and its victim vanished from view; the chorus of fear and anger died away. Clindar watched, and waited.

Slowly and cautiously, the hominids came down from the trees, in which they did not seem to be completely at home. They walked on all fours, but from time to time reared up on their hind limbs and took several steps in an upright position. Abruptly, as if they had spotted the leopard again, they all fled in panic, away from the river and the trees. As they ran, they became true bipeds, covering considerable distances without their forelimbs touching the ground.

Clindar followed them with some difficulty, and at first thought he had lost them. Then he spotted their brown figures coloured pencilsswarming up the almost vertical face of a sandstone cliff, heading for a cave some fifty feet from the ground. It was a well-chosen refuge, for the entrance was too high to be reached by the great cats. Such a choice of dwelling place might be instinctive, but it might also indicate the dawn of intelligence. These creatures, Clindar told himself with mounting excitement, would certainly merit watching.

Through long but fascinating hours at the periscope, he grew to know them all, and to learn the pattern of their behavior. There were only ten of them-four males, three females, three infants-and physically they were unimpressive specimens, living always on the edge of hunger. Most of their food was obtained by foraging among grasses and shrubs, but they were not exclusively vegetarian. They ate meat whenever they could get it, which was seldom, for they were inefficient hunters. About the only animals that fell prey to them were tortoises, small rodents, and occasional fish that they could catch in the shallows of the river.

Because they did not possess the simplest tools, they could not even take proper advantage of such rare and accidental windfalls as a mired elephant, or an antelope that had broken its leg. The meat would rot before they could tear it all out with their teeth; and they could not fight off the big carnivores that would be attracted to such a feast.

It was a wonder that they had survived, and their future did not look promising. Clindar was not in the least surprised when one of the infants died, apparently of starvation, and the little body was thrown out of the cave for the hyenas to carry away. These creatures had not yet learned the useful accomplishment of burying their dead, lest they lead wild animals to the living.

But Clindar, with the experience of many worlds behind him, knew that appearances could be deceptive. These unprepossessing near-apes had one great advantage over all the other creatures of their planet. They were still unspecialized; they had not yet become trapped in any evolutionary cul-de-sac. Almost every animal could beat them in some respect-in strength, or speed, or hearing, or natural armament. There was no single skill in which the hominids excelled, but they could do everything after a fashion. Where the other animals had become virtuosos, they had specialized in a universal mediocrity-and therein, a million years hence, might lie their salvation. Having failed to adapt themselves to their environment, they might yet one day change it to suit their own desires.

Other humanoid races, times without number, had taken a different road. Clindar had seen, either with his own eyes or through the records of other explorers, those who had chosen to specialize-though the choice, of course, was never a conscious one. He had seen near-men who could run like the wind, swim like fish, hunt in the dark with sonar or infrared senses; on one world of exceptionally low gravity he had even encountered men who could fly. Most of these specialists had been extremely successful; so successful that they had had no need to develop more than a rudimentary intelligence.

And therefore they were doomed, though they might flourish for a million years. Sooner or later, the environment to which they were so perfectly adapted would change, and they could not change with it. They were too far from the crucial fork in the evolutionary road ever to retrace their steps.

On this world, the choice remained; the irrevocable coloured pencilsdecision between brain and body had not yet been made. The future was still in the balance. Here, on this tropical plain, the balance might be tipped-in favor of intelligence.

MOON-WATCHER

It was surprising how quickly all the animals grew accustomed to the ship; because it did nothing, and merely stood motionless on itscoloured pencils tripod of legs, they soon came to regard it as part of the landscape. In the heat of noon, lions would shelter beneath it, and sometimes elephants and dinotheria would rub their thick hides against the landing gear. Clindar preferred to choose a moment when none of the larger or more dangerous beasts were around when he made his first exit

From the underbelly of the ship a transparent, cylindrical tube ten feet in diameter lowered itself until it had reached ground level, down this, in an equally transparent cage, rode Clindar and his equipment. The curving walls slid open, and he stepped out onto the new world.

He was insulated from it, as completely as if he were still inside the ship, but the flexible suit that surrounded him from head to foot was only a minor inconvenience. He had full freedom of movement, for there was no external vacuum to make the suit stiff and rigid. Indeed, he could even breathe the surrounding atmosphere-after it had been scrubbed and filtered and purified by the small processing pack on his chest. The air of this planet might carry lethal organisms, but it was not poisonous.

He walked slowly away from the ship, feeling his balance in this alien gravity and accustoming himself to the weight of his equipment. Besides the usual communication and recording gear, he was carrying nets, small boxes for specimens, a geologist's hammer, a compact explosive powered drill, and a coil of thin but immensely strong rope. And though he had no offensive weapons, he had some extremely effective defensive ones. The land through which he was walking seemed absolutely barren of animal life, but he knew that this was an illusion. Thousands of eyes were watching him from trees and grass and undergrowth, and as he moved slowly along one of the trails which the herbivores had beaten to the waterhole, he was also conscious that the normal patterns of sound had changed. The creatures of this world knew that something strange had come into their lives, there was a hushed expectancy about the land-a subdued excitement that communicated itself to Clindar. He did not anticipate trouble, or danger; but if it came, he was ready for it.

He had already chosen his vantage point, a large rock about a hundred yards from the watering place where the hominid had been killed. Near the summit was a cave formed by two boulders resting against each other, it would provide just the shelter and concealment he needed. Such a desirable residence was not, of course, empty, it contained several large, indignant, and undoubtedly poisonous snakes. He ignored them, since they could not harm him through the tough yet almost invisible envelope of his suit.

He set up his cameras and his directional microphones, reported back to the ship, and waited.

For the first few days he merely observed without interference. He learned the order in which the various animals came to the water, until he could predict their arrival with fair accuracy. Above all, he studied the little group of hominids, until he knew them as individuals and had christened them all with appropriate private names. There was Greypate, the oldest and most aggressive, who dominated all the others. There were Crookback and One-Hand and Broken-Fang, but the most interesting was the young adult that Clindar had called Moon-Watcher, because he had once spotted him at dusk, standing on a low rock and staring motionless into the face of the rising moon. The posture itself was unusual, for the hominids seldom stood erect for more than a few seconds at a time, but even more striking was the suggestion of conscious thought and wonder. Perhaps this was an illusion; yet Clindar doubted if any other inhabitant of this world ever stopped to stare at the moon. Nor was it, in this environment, a very sensible thing to do. Clindar was strangely relieved when the creature started to trot back toward its cave, away from the unsleeping perils of the night.

His first attempt to collect specimens was not a success. A small antelope, with graceful, corkscrew horns, had apparently become detached from the herd and was wandering along the trail to the waterhole in a rather distracted manner. Clindar got it in the sight of his narcotic gun, aimed carefully at the fleshy part of the flank, and squeezed the trigger. With barely a sound, the dart whispered to its target.

The antelope started, though no more violently than if a mosquicoloured pencilsto had bitten it. For a moment there was no other reaction-but the biochemists had done their work well. The animal walked three or four paces, and then collapsed in a heap.

Clindar hurried out of the cave to collect his victim. He was halfway down the sloping rockface when there was a flash of coloured pencilsyellow, and almost before he had realized what had happened, the antelope was gone. A passing leopard had outsmarted an intelligence that could span the Galaxy.

Some hunters would have cursed; Clindar merely laughed and went back to his cave. Two hours later, he shot Moon-Watcher.

He reached the fallen hominid only seconds after the flying dart. Beneath its hairy pelt the body was well muscled but undernourished, he had no difficulty at all in lifting it and carrying it back to the ship, where a thorough examination could be made.

Moon-Watcher was still unconscious, but breathing steadily, when the elevator took him up into the ship. He slept peacefully in the sealed test chamber for many hours, while scores of instruments measured his reactions and beams of radiation scanned the interior of his body as if it had been made of glass. His head was shaved, with considerable difficulty, for the hair was a matted and well-populated tangle, and electrodes were attached to his scalp. In the mother ship, thousands of miles above the earth, the great computers probed and analyzed the patterns of cerebral activity, so much simpler than their own; and presently they delivered their verdict.

When it was all finished, Clindar carried Moon Watcher back to the elevator and down to ground level. He left him still unconscious, propped up against one of the landing legs, and guarded him from the ship until he had come to his senses. He would have done the same with any other animal; centuries of traveling through the empty wastes of the universe had given him an intense reverence for life in all its forms. Though he never hesitated to kill when it was necessary, he always did so with reluctance.

Presently Moon-Watcher stirred drowsily, scrcoloured pencilsatched his newly bared scalp with obvious astonishment, and staggered to his feet. He proceeded for a few yards in a wavering line, then became aware of the ship looming above him, and stopped to examine it. Perhaps he thought it was some peculiar kind of rock, for he showed no signs of alarm. After a few minutes, now much steadier, he set off briskly in the direction of his cave, and soon disappeared from view.

When the intelligence profiles and brain-capacity assessments came down from the mother ship, Clindar brooded over them for a long time, discussed them with his colleagues, and asked the computers far overhead for their extrapolations into the future. There was potential here- several billion brain cells, as yet only loosely interconnected. Whether that potential could ever be realized depended on time and luck. Time could not be hurried; but luck was not altogether beyond the power of intelligent control.

Here was a situation common in the history of stellar exploration, though it was new to Clindar himself. Often the ships of his people had arrived at a world where some creature was at the watershed between instinct and conscious thought, and in the early days there had been much debate about the appropriate action. Some argued that it was better to stand aside and to leave the ultimate decision to chance and nature; but when this was done, the result was almost always the same. The universe was as indifferent to intelligence as it was to life, left to themselves, the dawning minds had less than one chance in a hundred of survival. Most of them achieved no more than a tragic consciousness of their own doom, before they were swept into oblivion.

In these circumstances, the choice was clear-though not all races would have been sufficiently unselfish to make it. When an emerging species could be helped, aid was given. But too much assistance could also be fatal, and it was necessary to aim for a minimum of interference, lest the rising culture become no more than a distorted echo of an alien society.

For in the long run a species, like an individual, had to stand on its own feet, and find its own destiny. Clindar was very well aware of this, as he studied the hominids and prepared to play God.

There had been a heavy rainstorm, and the world around him was tantalizingly fresh and sparkling beyond the impermeable barrier of his suit. On such a morning, it seemed a crime to kill, nor was there any exoneration in the knowledge that thousands of hidden deaths were occurring every minute in this shining land.

The hunter from the stars stood at the edge of the Savannah, choosing his victim. Out to the horizon he could see uncountable numbers of gazelles and antelopes and wildebeest and zebras-or creatures whose descendants would one day bear these names-browsing on the sea of grass. He raised his weapon to his shoulder, aimed through it like a telescope, and pressed the firing stud. There was a flicker of light, barely visible in the fierce glare of the African sun, and a young gazelle dropped so swiftly and silently that none of its companions took the slightest notice. Even when Clindar walked out to collect the body-unmarked except for the charred hole above the heart-they trotted only a few yards away and regarded him with only mild alarm.

He threw the gazelle over his shoulder and set off at a brisk walk toward the cave of the hominids. Before he had gone three hundred yards he realized, with some amusement, that he was being stalked by a saber-toothed tiger that had emerged from the undergrowth at the edge of the plain.

He put down the gazelle and turned to face the great cat. When it saw that he was aware of it, the tiger growled softly and opened its jaws in a terrifying display of fangs. At the same moment, it quickened its pace.

Clindar also wasted no time. He threw a switch on his suit, and at once the air was rent by a hideous, undulating howl as of a thousand souls in torment. Out on the plain, the flocks of herbivores began to stampede, and even above the cacophony of the siren he could hear the drumming of their hooves like a distant thunder.

The tiger reared up on its haunches, slashing viciously at the empty air in its surprise. Then it dropped back to the ground and, to Clindar's utter astonishment, continued its advance. It was very brave, or very stupid, or very hungry. In any event, it was very dangerous.

Clindar whipped his projector into the firing position, and barely had time to defocus it before the tiger charged. This time there was no visible flash, for the beam fanned out over too wide an area to produce its characteristic scintillation. But when the tiger reached the ground it was already blind, for it had stared into the light of a hundred suns. Clindar had no difficulty in avoiding it as it staggered away, shaking its massive head from side to side in confusion.

It would be at least an hour before the magnificent beast's sight returned to normal; as it tottered away, Clindar hoped that it would not injure itself by crashing into any obstacles.

There were no more interruptions in his morning walk, and presently, not even winded by his exertions, he arrived at the cliff face where the hominids lived. Keeping in full view, and making as much noise as possible, he placed his offering immediately beneath the opening of the cave. Then he moved back a hundred yards, sat down, and waited with the patience of a being who had already seen a thousand birthdays and could, if he wished, see endless thousands more.

There must, he knew, be many eyes watching him from the darkness of the cave, and behind those eyes would be dim brains in which fear andcoloured pencils hunger strove together. It would be rare indeed for the hominids to encounter such a windfall as this, for the gazelles could outrun them easily and they had not yet invented any of the arts of the hunter.

It was a full hour before the oldest of the males appeared in the shadows of the opening, started outside for a few seconds and then disappeared again into the gloom. Nothing else happened for another hour or so then Clindar's friend Moon-Watcher emerged, looked around nervously, and started to descend the face of the cliff. He scuttled across to the dead gazelle, which was now surrounded by a cloud of buzzing flies, and paused here for a moment, obviously torn with agonizing indecision.

Clindar could read the creature's mind with the utmost ease. Shall I feast here, it was saying to itself, and risk being eaten myself-or shall I carry this banquet back to the safety of the cave-where I will have to share it with the others?

Moon-Watcher solved his excruciating problem by a compromise. He buried his fangs in the neck of the gazelle, and with great difficulty, tore out a hunk of bloody meat. Then he threw the corpse over his shoulder and swarmed up the rockface with quite astonishing speed.

Lesson one was over. Feeling very satisfied, Clindar went back to the ship. He did not expect that the hominids would leave the cave again that day.

Seven gazelles and two antelopes latercoloured pencils he had made considerable progress. When he left his present at the foot of the cliff, the whole family would emerge and quarrel over it. Their table manners left much to be desired, but they were beginning to take him for granted. Though he sat in full view, a strange and utterly alien figure in his shimmering protective envelope, they appeared quite unafraid of him. Every day he had moved a little closer, until now he sat within fifty feet of the dining place.

Before the hominids became completely dependent upon him, and forgot how to fend for themselves, he would take the next step.

GIFT FROM THE STARS

Jupiter was a brilliant star, almost vertically above him, as Clindar walked through the sleeping bush an hour before dawn. Up there, half a billion miles away, was the entrance of the Star Gate, and the road across the light-years that led to his infinitely more distant home. It was a road with many branches, most of them still unexplored and leading to destinations which were perhaps unimaginable. Down a few of those byways were the lonely civilizations scattered so sparsely throughout this arm of the galactic spiral. One day this world might be among them; but that time could not come for at least a million years.

The hominids never left their cave during the hours of darkness, but Clindar could hear them barking and quarreling sleepily as they prepared to meet the new day. He placed his bribe-a young boar-at the foot of the cliff, where they were bound to pass. This time, however, he did not withdraw. He sat down only a few feet away from the sacrifice, and waited.

The stars faded from the sky, Jupiter last of all. Presently the rays of the rising sun began to gild the face of the cliff, moving slowly downward until they shone straight into the cave. Then, from the interior, came a sudden excited chattering, and the high-pitched "EekEek" which Clindar had grown to recognize as an alarm signal. The hominids had spotted him.

He could see their hairy figures milling around in the entrance, undecided what to do next. If they did not pluck up enough courage to come down in a reasonable time, Clindar would leave. But he would take the boar with him, and hope that they would draw the conclusion that food and friendship were inseparably linked.

To his pleased surprise he did nocoloured pencilst have long to wait. Moving slowly but steadily, Moon- Watcher was descending the face of the cliff. He got to within twenty feet of ground level and then paused to survey the situation. Presumably he still felt quite confident that he was safe, and in ordinary circumstances he would have been right. Only a nimble ape, and not one of the great cats, would be able to scale this almost vertical rock.

Clindar pulled a knife from his equipment belt, and, with rather more energy than skill, started to disjoint the boar. It must, he thought, look like magic to MoonWatcher to see how swiftly the tough meat came apart; he was performing in a few seconds acts which took the hominids many minutes of tearing and biting. When he had detached a foreleg, he held it out to his fascinated spectator.

He was patient, and Moon-Watcher was hungry, but the result was not inevitable. For many minutes the creature hovercoloured pencilsed hesitantly on the face of the cliff, descending a few feet, then hastily scrambling upward again. At last it made its decision, and gathered all its courage together. Still prepared for instant flight, Moon-Watcher dropped from the face of the cliff and started to sidle towards Clindar, approaching him in a cautious, crab-wise manner. Every few steps he stood upright for a second, grimacing and showing his teeth. He was obviously trying to demonstrate that he could defend himself if the need arose.

It took him several minutes, with numerous retreats and hesitations, to cross the last few feet. While he was doing this, Clindar pretended to chew avidly at the leg of boar, holding it out invitingly from time to time.

Abruptly, it was snatched from his hand, and in seconds Moon-Watcher was halfway up the cliff, carrying his prize between his teeth. Patiently, Clindar started to slice away at the carcass once more, waiting for the next move. It came within the hour, when Moon-Watcher returned for a second helping. This time, Graypate and Broken Fang followed him part of the way down the cliff face, anxious to see how it was done.

So the experiment in primitive diplomacy continued, day after day-sometimes in the morning before the hominids had left their cave, sometimes in the evening as they returned from the day's foraging. By the end of a week, Clindar had become accepted as an honorary member of the tribe. They were completely unafraid of him, and would squat in a circle watching his actions from a few feet away. Some of the infants would scamper over and touch him, until scolded by their mothers; but the adults still avoided direct contact. They were inquisitive, but not yet friendly.

To Clindar it was a weird, almost unreal existence, this daily switching between two worlds a million years apart. While his colleagues were probing the planet with the most advanced instruments of their science, he was mentally identifying himself with creatures who had barely reached the dawn of reason. He had to see through their eyes, remember the limitations of their clumsy fingers, imagine the slow processes of their brains when they were confronted with something new. Fortunately, there was the experience of others to guide him; when he was aboard the scoutship, he would search the records of the past, learning what earlier expeditions had done, on other worlds. He could profit from their successes, and avoid their mistakes.

Because speech still lay a million years in the future, the only way to instruct these creatures was by example. And because his people excelled in anything they turned their minds to, Clindar was soon the most efficient hunter on the planet. He was surprised, and a little disturbed, to find how much he enjoyed it. The ancient instincts had not wholly died, even though it had been a hundred thousand generations since they had last been given rein.

His favorite weapon was the thighbone of one of the larger antelopes; with its knobbly end, it formed a perfect natural club, much superior to any branch that could be wrenched off a tree. With a single well-placed blow it could kill animals up to the size of the hominids themselves, and it could drive off creatures that were far larger. Clindar was anxious to prove this, and had thought of staging a demonstration. As it turned out, his wish was granted without any deliberate planning.

The horde-it could not yet be granted the name of tribe-had now completely identified him with food, and the males were ready to follow him wherever he went. Even those females who were not burdened with infants would sometimes stop gathering leaves and fruit to accompany him, in the hope of profiting from his success.

They found the dead zebra only a few hundred yards from the scoutship, surrounded by the hyenas that had run it down. Thercoloured pencilse were six of the mangy, unprepossessing scavengers worrying the carcass; confident that nothing smaller than a lion could disturb them, they continued their feasting as Clindar approached. Behind his back he could hear his pupils chattering nervously as they kept their distance.

The hyenas looked at Clindar warily, snarling and holding their ground, as he came nearer. He was the first biped they had ever seen-indeed, the only biped in all this world-but his strangeness did not alarm them. They were certain that they could protect their spoils.

A second later, they were not so sure. Clindar advanced on them like a whirlwind, a club in each hand-for he was completely ambidextrous-and started raining blows on the startled beasts. Too astonished to fight back, they fled, yelping hideously; then one of them regained his courage, spun around, and launched himself straight at Clindar's head.

That was good; it must not seem too easy, or the hominids would put too great a faith in these primitive weapons, and get themselves into disastrous situations. They must learn that a club would not make them invincible, and that the outcome of a fight would still depend on their own skill and strength.

Nevertheless, Clindar cheated, it was not really a fair demonstration, though it served its purpose admirably. He was far more powerful and better coordinated than these clumsy ape-men, and in an emergency he could move with a speed which very few animals on this world could match. Moreover, he was completely protected by the flexible yet incredibly tough film that insulated him from the microscopic killers that teemed in air and soil. The hyena did not really have a chance.

Clindar had already moved aside acoloured pencilss it went hurtling by him, drifting past in slow motion to his accelerated senses. He caught it one terrific blow with the club as it sailed by-misjudging his strength, because the bone splintered and snapped and he was left holding the stump in his hand. But it did not matter, the hyena was dead before it reached the ground. The others, who had turned to watch the fight and were prowling hopefully in the near distance, did not wait for a further demonstration.

During the fight, the hominids had also kept their distance, but at least they had not been scared away. Now they approached with a kind of nervous eagerness, their attention equally divided between Clindar and his victim.

Moon-Watcher, always in the forefront, reached him first. He edged over to the slain hyena, put out a cautious paw, touched the body, and quickly withdrew. Twice he repeated this, until he was convinced that the animal was really dead. Then his jaw dropped in a comical expression of astonishment, and he stared at Clindar as if he could not believe his eyes.

Clindar held out the second, unbroken dub in his right hand, and waited. This was the moment; no better one would ever come. If Moon-Watcher had not learned the lesson now, he would never do so.

The hominid came slowly toward him, then squatted down only five feet away; he had never approached so closely before. Holding his head slightly on one side in an attitude of intense concentration, he stared at the bone held rigidly in Clindar's hand. Then he reached out a paw and touched the crude club.

His fingers grasped the end, and tugged gently at it. Clindar held firm for a moment, then released his grip.

Moon-Watcher drew the bone away from him, looked at it intently, then began to sniff and nibble at it. A spasm of disappointment shot through Clindar's mind; the lesson was already forgotten. This was just another morsel of food-not a key to the future, a tool that could lead to the mastery of this world, and of many others.

Then Moon-Watcher suddenly remembered. He jumped to his feet, and began to dance around waving the club in his right paw. As long as he kept moving, he could rear almost upright; only when he stood still did he have to use his free forelimb as a support. He had already begun to make the awesome and irrevocable transition from quadruped to biped.

The little dance lasted about five seconds; then Moon-Watcher shot off on a tangent. He raced toward the deacoloured pencilsd hyena in such a frenzy of excitement that his companions, who had already started to quarrel over the feast, scattered in fright.

Awkwardly, but with an energy that made up for his lack of skill, Moon-Watcher began to pound the carcass with his club, while the others looked on with awed astonishment. Clindar alone understood what was happening, and knew that this world had come to a turning point in time. To the most promising of its creatures, he had given the first tool; and the history of yet another race had begun.

FAREWELL TO EARTH

During the next five years, as the scoutships drifted far and wide over the face of the planet gathering thousands of specimens and millions of items of information, Clindar revisited the hominids many times. He never went hunting with them again; they had learned that lesson with astonishing-indeed, with ominous-speed, and all the males now knew how to use clubs when the need arose. Instead he had tried to introduce other tools, of which the most important were stone knives and hammers.

These small hand tools, crude though they might appear at first sight, represented a gigantic leap forward in technology. They multiplied the efficiency-and therefore the chance of survival-of their users many times. With a properly shaped flint one could dig up tough roots and hack off succulent branches which would otherwise be exhausting and laborious to collect. And a small, round pebble that fitted the hand nicely could split bones to get at the marrow, or crack animal skulls to reach the tenderest and most well-protected of all meat.

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