Living Fossil
Astounding Science-Fiction. February 1939
1939*
L. Sprague de Camp

	WHERE the rivers flowed together, the country was flat and, in places, swampy. The combined waters spread out and crawled around reedy islands. Back from the banks, the ground rose into low tree-crowned humps.

	The May flies were swarming that day, and as thousands of them danced, the low afternoon sun, whose setting would bring death to them all, glinted on their wings. There was little sound, other than the hum of a belated cicada and the splashing of an elephantlike beast in the southern tributary.

	The beast suddenly raised its head, its great mulish ears swiveling forward and its upraised trunk turning this way and that like a periscope. It evidently disapproved of what it smelled, for it heaved its bulk out of its bath and ambled off up a creek bed, the feet on its columnar legs making loud sucking noises as they pulled out of the mud.

	Two riders appeared from downstream, each leading an animal similar to the one he rode. The animals' feet swished through the laurel beds and went squilch-squilch as they struck patches of muck. As they crossed the creek bed, the leading rider pulled up his mount and pointed to the tracks made by the elephantine beast.

	"Giant tapir!" he said in his own harsh, chattering language. "A big one. What a specimen he'd make!"

	"Ngoy?" drawled his companion, meaning approximately "Oh, yeah?" He continued: "And how would we get it back to South America? Carry it slung from a pole?"

	The first rider made the grating noise in his throat that was his race's equivalent of laughter. "I didn't suggest shooting it. I just said it would make a good specimen. We'll have to get one some day. The museum hasn't a decent mounted example of the species."

	The riders were anthropoid, but not human. Their large prehensile tails, rolled up behind them on the saddle, and the thick coats of brown and black hair that covered them, precluded that. Their thumblike halluces or big toes jutted out from the mid-portion of their feet and were hooked into the stirrups, which were about the size and shape of napkin rings. Below the large liquid eyes in their prognathous faces there were no external noses, just a pair of narrow nostrils set wide apart. The riders weighed about one hundred and fifty pounds each. A zoologist of today would have placed them in the family Cebidae, the capuchin monkeys, and been right. They would have had more difficulty in classifying the zoologist, because in their time the science of paleontology was young, and the family tree of the primates had not been worked out fully.

	Their mounts were the size of mules; tailless, round-eared, and with catlike whiskers sprouting from their deep muzzles. They absurdly resembled colossal guinea pigs, which they were; or rather, they were colossal agoutis, the ordinary agouti being a rabbit-sized member of the cavy family.

	The leading rider whistled. His mount and the lead pack agouti bucked up the creek bank and headed at their tireless trot toward one of the mounds. The rider dismounted and began poking around between the curiously regular granite blocks scattered among the green-and-brown-spotted trunks of the sycamores. Grasshoppers exploded from under his feet as he walked.

	He called, "Chujee!"

	The other rider trotted up and got off. The four agoutis went to work with their great chisel teeth on the low-drooping branches.

	"Look," the first rider said, turning over one of the blocks. "Those faces are too nearly parallel to have been made that way by accident. And here's one with two plane surfaces at a perfect right angle. I think we've found it."

	"Ngoy?" drawled the other. "You mean the site of a large city of Men? Maybe." Skepticism was patent in his tone as he strolled about, poking at the stones with his foot. Then his voice rose. "Nawputta! You think you've found something; look at this!" He uprighted a large stone. Its flat face was nearly smooth, but when it was turned so that the sun's rays were almost parallel with the face, a set of curiously regular shadows sprang out on the surface.

	Nawputta—he had a given name as well, but it was both unpronounceable and unnecessary to reproduce here—scowled at it, trying in his mind to straighten the faint indentations into a series of inscribed characters. He fished a camera out of his harness and snapped several pictures, while Chujee braced the stone. The markings were as follows:

-

NATIO
ANK OF
TTSBURGH

-

	"It's an inscription, all right," Nawputta remarked, as he put his camera away. "Most of it's weathered away, which isn't surprising, considering that the stone's been here for five or ten million years, or however long Man has been extinct. The redness of this sand bears out the theory. It's probably full of iron oxide. Men must have used an incredible amount of steel in their buildings."

	Chujee asked: "Have you any idea what the inscription says?" In his voice there was the trace of awe which the capuchins felt toward these predecessors who had risen so high and vanished so utterly.

	"No. Some of our specialists will have to try to decipher it from my photographs. That'll be possible only if it's in one of the languages of Man that have been worked out. He had dozens of different languages that we know of, and probably hundreds that we don't. The commonest was En-gel-iss-ha, which we can translate fairly well. It's too bad there aren't some live Men running around. They could answer a lot of questions that puzzle us."

	"Maybe," said Chujee. "And maybe it's just as well there aren't. They might have killed us off if they'd thought we were going to become civilized enough to compete with them."

	"Perhaps you're right. I never thought of that. I wish we could take the stone back with us."

	Chujee grunted. "When you hired me to guide you, you told me the museum just wanted you to make a short reconnaissance. And every day you see something weighing a ton or so that you want to collect. Yesterday it was that bear we saw on the cliff; it weighed a ton and a half at least."

	"But," expostulated Nawputta, "that was a new subspecies!"

	"Sure," growled the guide. "That makes it different. New subspecies aren't really heavy; they only look that way. You scientific guys! We should have brought along a derrick, a steam tractor, and a gang of laborers from the Colony." His grin took the sting out of his words. "Well, old-timer, I see you'll be puttering around after relics all day; I might as well set up camp." He collected the agoutis and went off to find a dry spot near the river.

	Presently he was back. "I found a place," he said. "But we aren't the first ones. There's the remains of a recent fire."

	Nawputta, the zoologist, looked disappointed. "Then we aren't the first to penetrate this far into the Eastern Forest. Who do you suppose it was?"

	"Dunno. Maybe a timber scout from the Colony. They're trying to build up a lumber export business, you know. They don't like being too dependent on their salt and sulphur— Yeow!" Chujee jumped three feet straight up. "Snake!"

	Nawputta jumped, too; then laughed at their timidity. He bent over and snatched up the little reptile as it slithered among the stones. "It's perfectly harmless," he said. "Most of them are, this far north."

	"I don't care if it is," barked Chujee, backing up rapidly. "You keep that damn thing away from me!"

-

	Next day they pushed up the south tributary. The character of the vegetation slowly changed as they climbed. A few miles up, they came to another fork. They had to swim the main stream in order to follow the smaller one, as Nawputta wished to cast toward the line of hills becoming visible in the east, before turning back. As they swam their agoutis across the main street, a black-bellied cloud that had crept up behind them suddenly opened with a crash of thunder, and pelting rain whipped the surface to froth.

	As they climbed out On the far bank, Nawputta began absent-mindedly unrolling his cape. He almost had it on when a whoop from Chujee reminded him that he was thoroughly soaked already. The rain had slackened to a drizzle and presently ceased.

	The scientist sniffed. "Wood smoke," he said.

	Chujee grunted. "Either that's our mysterious friend, or we're just in time to stop a forest fire, if the rain hasn't done that for us." He kicked his mount forward. In the patch of pine they were traversing, the agoutis' feet made no sound on the carpet of needles. Thus they came upon the fire and the capuchin who was roasting a slab of venison over it before the latter saw them.

	At the snap of a twig, the stranger whirled and snatched up a heavy rifle.

	"Well?" he said in a flat voice. "Who be you?" In his cape, which he was still wearing after the rain, he looked like a caricature of Little Red Ridinghood.

	The explorers automatically reached for the rifles in their saddle boots, but thought better of it in the face of that unwavering muzzle. Nawputta identified himself and the guide.

	The stranger relaxed. "Oh! Just another one of those damn bug hunters. Sorry I scared you. Make yourselves at home. I'm Nguchoy tsu Chaw, timber scout for the Colony. We—I—came up in that canoe yonder. Made it ourselves out of birch bark. Great stuff, birch bark." "We?" echoed Nawputta.

	The scout's shoulders drooped sadly. "Just finished burying my partner. Rattlesnake got him. Name was Jawga; Jawga tsu Shrr. Best partner a scout ever had. Say, could you let me have some flea powder? I'm all out."

	As he rubbed the powder into his fur, he continued: "We'd just found the biggest stand of pine you ever saw. This river cuts through a notch in the ridge about thirty miles up. Beyond that it's gorges and rapids for miles, and beyond that it cuts through another ridge and breaks up into little creeks. We had to tie the boat up and hike. Great country; deer, bear, giant rabbit, duck, and all kinds of game. Not so thick as they say it is on the western plains, but you can shoot your meat easy." He went on to say that he was making a cast up the main stream before returning to the Colony with his news.

	After Nguchoy had departed early the following morning, Chujee, the guide, scratched his head. "Guess I must have picked up some fleas from our friend. Wonder why he held a gun on us until he found who we were? That's no way to treat a stranger."

	Nawputta wiggled his thumbs, the capuchin equivalent of a shrug. "He was afraid at being alone, I imagine."

	Chujee still frowned. "I can understand his grabbing it before he knew what was behind him; we might have been a lion. But he kept pointing it after he saw we were Jmu"—the capuchin word for "human" —"like himself. There aren't any criminals around here for him to be scared of. Oh, well, I guess I'm just naturally mistrustful of these damned Colonials. Do you want to look at this 'great country'?"

	"Yes," said Nawputta. "If we go on another week, we can still get out before the cold weather begins." (Despite their fur, the capuchins were sensitive to cold, for which reason exploration had lagged behind the other elements of their civilization.) "Nguchoy's description agrees with what Chmrrgoy saw from his balloon, though, as you recall, he never got up this far on foot. He landed by the river forty miles down and floated down the Big Muddy to the Colony on a raft."

	"Say," said Chujee. "Do you suppose they'll ever get a flying machine that'll go where you want it to, instead of being blown around like these balloons? You know all about these scientific things."

	"Not unless they can get a much lighter engine. By the time you've loaded your boiler, your engine proper, and your fuel and feed water aboard, your flying machine has as much chance of taking off as a granite boulder. There's a theory that Men had flying machines, but the evidence isn't conclusive. They may have had engines powered by mineral oils, which they pumped out of beds of oil-bearing sand. Our geologists have traced some of their borings. They used up nearly all the oils, so we have to be satisfied with coal."

-

	It was a great country, the explorers agreed when they reached it. The way there had not been easy. Miles before they reached the notch, they had had to cut their way through a forest of alders that stretched along the sides of the river. Chujee had gone ahead on foot, swinging an ax in time to his strides with the effortless skill of an old woodsman. With each swing the steel bit clear through the soft white wood of a slim trunk. Behind him, Nawputta had stumbled, the leading agouti's reins gripped in his tail.

	When they had passed through the notch, they climbed up the south side of the gorge in which they found themselves and in the distance saw another vast blue rampart, like the one they had just cut through, stretching away to the northeast. (This had once been called the Allegheny Mountains.) Age-old white pines raised their somber blue-green spires above them. A huge buffalo-shaped cervid, who was rubbing the velvet from his antlers against a tree trunk, smelled them, snorted, and lumbered off.

	"What's that noise?" asked Nawputta.

	They listened, and heard a faint rhythmical thumping that seemed to come out of the ground.

	"Dunno," said Chujee. "Tree trunks knocking together, maybe? But there isn't enough wind."

	"Perhaps it's stones in a pothole in the river," said Nawputta without conviction.

	They kept on to where the gorge widened out. Nawputta suddenly pulled his agouti off the game trail and jumped down. Chujee rode over and found the scientist examining a pile of bones.

	Ten minutes later he was still turning the bones over.

	"Well," said Chujee impatiently, "aren't you going to let me in on the secret?"

	"Sorry. I didn't believe my own senses at first. These are the bones of Men! Not fossils; fresh bones! From the looks of them they're the remains of a meal. There were three of them. From the holes in the skulls I'd say that our friend Nguchoy or his partner shot them. I'm going to get a whole specimen, if it's the last thing I do."

	Chujee sighed. "For a fellow who claims he hates to kill things, you're the bloodthirstiest cuss I ever saw when you hear about a new species."

	"You don't understand, Chujee," objected Nawputta. "I'm what's called a fanatical conservationist. Hunting for fun not only doesn't amuse me; it makes me angry when I hear about it. But securing a scientific specimen is different."

	"Oh," said Chujee.

-

	They peered out of the spruce thicket at the Man. He was a strange object to them, almost hairless, so that the scars on his yellow-brown skin showed. He carried a wooden club, and padded noiselessly over the pine needles, pausing to sniff the air. The sun glinted on the wiry bronze hair that sprouted from his chin.

	Nawputta squeezed his trigger; the rifle went off with a deafening ka-pow! A fainter ka-pow! bounced back from the far wall of the gorge as the Man's body struck the ground.

	"Beautiful!" cried Chujee. "Right through the heart! Couldn't have done better myself. But I'd feel funny about shooting one; they look so Jmu."

	Nawputta, getting out his camera, tape measure, notebook, and skinning knife, said: "In the cause of science I don't mind. Besides, I couldn't trust you not to try for a brain shot and ruin the skull."

	Hours later he was still dissecting his prize and making sketches. Chujee had long since finished the job of salting the hide, and was lolling about trying to pick up a single pine needle with his tail.

	"Yeah," he said, "I know it's a crime that we haven't got a tank of formaldehyde so we could pack the whole carcass back, instead of just the skin and skeleton. But we haven't got it, and never did have it, so why bellyache?"

	Much as he respected Nawputta, the zoologist got on his nerves at times. Not that he didn't appreciate the scientific point of view; he was well-read and had some standing as an amateur naturalist. But, having managed expeditions for years, he had long been resigned to the fact that you can carry only so much equipment at a time.

	He sat up suddenly with a warning "S-s-st!" Fifty feet away a human face peered out of a patch of brake ferns. He reached stealthily for his rifle; the face vanished. The hair on Chujee's neck and scalp rose. He had never seen such a concentration of malevolent hatred in one countenance. The ferns moved, and there was a brief flash of yellow-brown skin among the trees.

	"Better hurry," he said. "The things may be dangerous when one of 'em's been killed."

	Nawputta murmured vaguely that he'd have the skeleton cleaned in a few minutes. He was normally no more insensitive to danger than the guide, but in the presence of this scientific wonder, a complete Man, the rest of the world had withdrawn itself into a small section of his mind.

	Chujee, still peering into the forest, growled: "It's funny that Nguchoy didn't say anything to us about the Men. That is, unless he wanted us to be eaten by the things. And why should he want that? Say, isn't that pounding louder? I'll bet it's a Man pounding a hollow log for a signal. If Nguchoy wanted to get rid of us, he picked an ingenious method. He and his partner kill some of the Men, and we come along just when they've got nicely stirred up and are out for Jmu blood. Let's get out of here!"

	Nawputta was finished at last. They packed the skin and skeleton of the Man, mounted, and rode back the way they had come, glancing nervously into the shadows around them. The pounding was louder.

	They had gone a couple of miles and were beginning to relax, when something soared over their heads and buried itself quivering in the ground. It was a crude wooden spear. Chujee fired his rifle into the underbrush in the direction from which the spear had come. A faint rustle mocked him. The pounding continued.

	The notch loomed high before them, though still several miles away. The timber was smaller here, and there was more brush. They had originally come along the river, and followed game trails up the side of the gorge at this point. They hesitated whether or not to go back the same way.

	"I don't like to let them get above me," complained Nawputta.

	"We'll have to," argued Chujee. "The sides of the notch are too craggy; we'd never get the agoutis over it."

	They started down the slope, on which the trees thinned out. A chorus of yells brought them up sharply. The hairless things were pouring out of the deep woods and racing toward them.

	"The agoutis won't make it with those loads," snapped Chujee, and he flung himself off his mount.

	Nawputta did likewise, and his rifle crashed almost as soon as the guide's. The echoes of their rapid fire made a deafening uproar in the gorge. Nawputta, as he fired and worked the lever of his gun, wondered what he'd do when the magazine was empty.

	Then the Men were bounding back into the shelter of the woods, shrieking with fear. They vanished. Two of their number lay still, and a third thrashed about in a raspberry bush and screeched.

	"I can't see him suffer," said Nawputta. He drew a bead on the Man's head and fired. The Man quieted, but from the depths of the forest came screams of rage.

	Chujee said dryly, "They didn't interpret that as an act of mercy," as he remounted.

	The agoutis were trembling. Nawputta noticed that he was shaking a bit himself. He had counted his shots, and knew before he started to reload that he had had just one shot left.

	The yelping cries of the Men followed them as they headed into the notch, but the things didn't show themselves long enough for a shot.

	"That was too close for comfort," said Nawputta in a low voice, not taking his eyes from the woods. "Say, hasn't somebody invented a rifle whose recoil automatically reloads it, so that one can shoot it as fast as one pulls the trigger?"

	Chujee grunted. "Yeah, he was up in the Colony demonstrating it last year. I tried it out. It jammed regularly every other shot. Maybe they'll be practical some day, but for the present I'll stick to the good old lever action. I suppose you were thinking of what would have happened to us if the Men had kept on coming. I— Say, look!" He halted his animal. "Look up yonder!"

	Nawputta looked, and said: "Those boulders weren't piled up on top of the cliff when we came this way, were they?"

	"That's right. When we get into the narrowest part of the notch, they'll roll them down on us. They'll be protected from our guns by the bulge of the cliff. There's no pathway on the other side of the river. We can't swim the animals because of the rapids, and even if we could, the river's so narrow that the rocks would bounce and hit us anyway."

	Nawputta pondered. "We'll have to get through that bottle neck somehow; it'll be dark in a couple of hours."

	Both were silent for a while.

	Chujee said: "There's something wrong about this whole business; Nguchoy and his partner, I mean. If we ever get out of this—"

	Nawputta interrupted him: "Look! I could swim one agouti over here, and climb a tree on the other side. I could get a good view of the top of the cliffs. There's quite an open space there, and I could try to keep the Men away from the boulders with my gun, while you took the agoutis down through the notch. Then, if you can find a corresponding tree below the bottle neck, you could repeat the process while I followed you down."

	"Right! I'll fire three shots when I'm ready for you."

	Nawputta tethered his animal and hoisted himself up the big pine, his rifle held firmly in his tail. He found a place where he could rest the gun on a branch to sight, and waved to the guide, who set off at a trot down the narrow shelf along the churning waters.

	Sure enough, the Men presently appeared on top of the cliff. They looked smaller over the sights of Nawputta's rifle than he had expected; too small to make practical targets as individuals even. He aimed into the thick of these dancing pink midges and fired twice. The crash of the rifle was flung back sharply from the south wall of the gorge. He couldn't see whether he had hit anything, but the spidery things disappeared.

	Then he waited. The sun had long since disappeared behind the ridge, but a few slanting rays poked through the notch; insects were briefly visible as motes of light as they flew through these rays. Overhead a string of geese flapped southward.

	When Nawputta heard three shots, he descended, swam his agouti back across the river, and headed downstream. The dark walls of the gorge towered almost vertically over him. Above the roar of the rapids he heard a shot, then another. The agouti flinched at the reports, but kept on. The shots continued. The Men were evidently determined not to be balked of their prey this time. Nawputta counted—seven—eight. The firing ceased, and the zoologist knew that his companion was reloading.

	There was a rattle of loose rock. A boulder appeared over his head, swelled like a balloon, swished past him, and went plunk in the river beside him, throwing spray over him and his mount. He kicked the animal frantically and it bounded forward, nearly pitching its rider into the river at a turn.

	Nawputta wondered desperately why Chujee hadn't begun shooting again. He looked up, and saw that the air over his head seemed to be full of boulders hanging suspended. They grew as he watched, and every one seemed headed straight for him. He bent low and urged the animal; he saw black water under him as the agouti cleared a recess in the trail with a bucking jump. He thought: "Why doesn't he shoot? But it's too late now."

	The avalanche of rock struck the trail and the river behind him with a roar; one rock passed him so closely that he felt its wind. The agouti in its terror almost skidded off the trail. Then they were out in the sunlight again, and the animal's zigzag leaps settled into a smooth gallop.

	Nawputta pulled up opposite Chujee's tree.

	The guide was already climbing down with his rifle in his tail. He called: "Did you get hit? I thought you were a goner sure when the rock fall commenced. Got a twig caught in my breech while I was reloading."

	Nawputta tried to call back reassurance, but found he couldn't make a sound.

	When Chujee pulled his dripping mount up the bank, he got out his binoculars and looked at the south shoulder of the notch. He said: "Come on! They've already climbed down toward us; they haven't given up yet. But I think we can lose them if we can find that trail we cut through the alders. They don't know about it yet, and they'll probably scatter trying to find which way we've gone."

-

	Nawputta yawned, stretched, and sat up. Chujee was sitting by the fire at Nguchoy's camp, his rifle in his lap. Both still looked a trifle haggard after their sleepless flight down the river. They had strung the four agoutis in a column, and taken turns riding backward on the last one of the string to keep watch against another attack. But though the pounding had continued, the Men had not shown themselves again. When they arrived at Nguchoy's camp, the timber scout was not to be seen, evidently not having returned.

	Chujee said: "I've been thinking, while you were catching up on sleep, about this Nguchoy and his yarns. I don't reckon he intended us to return, though we couldn't prove anything against him.

	"And I wonder how it happened that his partner died at such a convenient time ... for him. He needed this Jawga person to help him paddle up the rivers. But once they got to the head of navigation, Nguchoy could get back downstream easy enough without help. And when they'd found that great pine forest, it would be mighty convenient if an accident happened to Jawga. When Nguchoy went back to the Colony, he wouldn't have to share the credit for the find, and the bonus, with anybody."

	Nawputta raised his eyebrows, and without a word began hunting in their duffel for a spade.

	In half an hour they had dug up all that was mortal of Jawga tsu Shrr. Nawputta examined the remains, which were in a most unpleasant state of decay.

	"See!" he said. "Two holes in the skull, which weren't made by any rattlesnake. The one on the left side is just about right for a No. 14 rifle bullet going in."

	They were silent. Over the swish of the wind in the trees came a faint rhythmical pounding.

	"Do we want to pinch him?" asked Chujee. "It's a long way back to the Colony."

	Nawputta thought. "I have a better idea. We'll rebury the corpse for the present."

	"Nothing illegal," said Chujee firmly.

	"N-no, not exactly. It's this way. Have you ever seen a Colony lumberjack gang in action?"

	Nawputta shoved the corpse into the grave. The pounding was louder. Both capuchins looked to see that their rifles were within easy reach.

	A tuneless whistling came through the trees.

	"Quick!" whispered Nawputta. "Sprinkle some leaves on the grave. When he arrives, you get his attention. Talk about anything."

	The whistling stopped, and presently the timber scout appeared. If he was surprised to see the explorers, he did not show it.

	"Hello," he said. "Have a good trip?"

	He paused and sniffed the air. The explorers realized that there had been one thing they couldn't put back in the grave. Nguchoy looked at the grave, but made no remark.

	"Sure, we did," said Chujee in his best good-fellow manner, and went on to talk about the splendor of the gorge and the magnificence of the pines.

	The pounding was becoming louder, but nobody seemed to notice.

	"Nguchoy," said Nawputta suddenly, "did you and Jawga see any traces of live Men in the forest?"

	The timber scout snorted. "Don't be a sap. Men have been—what's that word?—extinct for millions of years. How could we see them?"

	"Well," the scientist went on, "we did." He paused. The only sound was the pounding. Or were there faint yelping cries? "Moreover, we've just had a look at the remains of your late-lamented partner."

	There was silence again, except for the ominous sounds of the approach of Men.

	"Are you going to talk to us?" asked Nawputta.

	Nguchoy grinned. "Sure, I'll talk to you." He sprang back to the tree against which he had left his rifle standing. "With this!" He snatched up the weapon and pulled the trigger.

	The rifle gave out a metallic click.

	Nawputta opened his fist, showing a handful of cartridges. Then he calmly picked up his own rifle and covered the timber scout.

	"Chujee," he said, "you take his knife and hatchet and the rest of his ammunition."

	The guide, dumfounded by the decisive way of his usually impractical companion, obeyed.

	"Now," said Nawputta, "tie the four agoutis together, and hitch the leading one to the end of Nguchoy's canoe. We're pulling out."

	"But what?" asked Chujee uncertainly.

	Nawputta snapped: "I'll explain later. Hurry."

	As the explorers piled into the boat, the timber scout woke to life.

	"Hey!" he shouted. "Aren't you taking me along? The Men'll be here any minute, and they'll eat me! They even eat their own kind when one's been killed!"

	"No," said Nawputta, "we aren't taking you."

	The canoe pulled out into the river, the agoutis following unwillingly till only their heads and loads showed above water.

	"Hey!" screamed Nguchoy. "Come back! I'll confess!"

	The canoe kept on, the agoutis swimming in its wake.

	As the site of the camp receded, there was a sudden commotion among the trees. The now-familiar yells of the Men were mingled with despairing shrieks from the timber scout. The shrieks ceased, and the voices of the Men were raised in a rhythmical but tuneless chant, which the explorers could hear long after the camp was hidden from view.

-

	Chujee, paddling low, stared straight before him for a while in silence. Finally he turned around in his seat and said deliberately: "That's the lowest damned trick I ever saw in my life. To leave him there defenseless like that to be eaten by those hairless things. I don't care if he was a liar and a murderer."

	Nawputta's expression of smugness vanished, and he looked slightly crestfallen. "You don't approve, do you? I was afraid you wouldn't. But I had to do it that way."

	"Well, why?"

	Nawputta took a long breath and rested his paddle. "I started to explain before, but I didn't have time. Nguchoy had killed his partner, and was going to return to the Colony with the news of the forest. He tried to have us killed by the Men, and when that didn't work, he'd have killed us himself if I hadn't emptied his gun behind his back.

	"When he got back to the Colony, a timber gang would have been sent out. They'd have wiped out that forest in a few years, and you'll admit that it's probably the finest in the whole Eastern Mountain area. Moreover, they'd have killed off the wild life, including the Men, partly for food, partly for self-protection, and partly because they like to shoot.

	"We thought Man had been extinct for millions of years, after having spread all over the world and reached a state of civilization as high as or higher than ours. The Men that we saw may well be the last of their species. You're a practical fellow, and I don't know whether I can make you understand a biologist's feeling toward a living fossil like that. To us it's simply priceless, and there's nothing we won't do to preserve it.

	"If we can get back to South America before the news of the pine stand reaches the Colony, I can pull the necessary wires to have the area set aside as a park or preserve. The Colony can just as well go else where for its lumber. But if the Colony hears about it first, I shan't have a chance.

	"If we'd taken Nguchoy back with us, even if we'd brought him to justice, he'd still have been able to give the news away, especially since he could probably have purchased leniency by it. And that would be the end of my park idea.

	"If we'd taken the law into our own hands, even if I'd been able to overcome your objections to doing so, we'd have been in a fix when, as will inevitably happen, the Colony sends an officer up to investigate the disappearance of their scout. If we said he died of a snake bite, for instance, and the officer found a body with a bullet hole through the head, or alternatively if he'd found no body at all, he'd have been suspicious. As it is, we can truthfully say, when they ask us, that Nguchoy was alive and sound of wind and limb the last time we saw him. The officer will then find the remains, having obviously been eaten by the Men. Of course, we needn't volunteer any information until the park proposal is in the bag.

	"The reason I took his canoe is that I remembered that Men probably can't swim. At least, the chimpanzee, which is the nearest living relative of Man, can't, whereas we can swim instinctively as soon as we're able to walk.

	"But there's a bigger issue than Nguchoy and the Men. You probably think I'm a bit cracked, with my concern for conservation.

	"We know that Man, during the period of his civilization, was prodigally wasteful of his resources. The exhaustion of the mineral oils is an example. And the world-wide extinction of the larger mammals at the close of the last ice age was probably his doing, at least in part. We're sure that he was responsible for wiping out all the larger species of whales, and we suspect that he also killed off all but two of the twenty or more species of elephant that abounded at that time. Most of the large mammals of today have evolved in the last few million years from forms that were small enough to sit in your hand in Man's time.

	"We don't know just why he became extinct, or almost extinct. Perhaps a combination of war and disease did it. Perhaps the exhaustion of his resources had a share. You know what a hardboiled materialist I am in most things; but it always has seemed to me that it was a case of outraged nature taking its revenge. That's not rational, but it's the way I feel. And I've dedicated my life to seeing that we don't make the same mistake.

	"Now do you see why I had to do what I did?"

	Chujee was silent for a moment, then said: "Perhaps I do. I won't say I approve . . . yet. But I'll think it over for a few days. Say, we'll have to land soon; the agoutis are getting all tired out from swimming."

	The canoe slid on down the river in the Indian-summer sunshine. The white men who had applied the name "Indian summer" to that part of the year were gone, as were the Indians after whom it had been named. Of mighty Man, the only remnant was a little savage tribe in the Alleghenies. A representative of a much more ancient order, a dragonfly, hovered over the bow, its four glassy wings glittering in the sunlight. Then with a faint whir it wheeled and fled.

The End