ance with the land
which, according to the galactic map, had once been a cape on a much
larger land mass. Though the Terrans had found the ruins, if those
saucers in the sea could be so termed, the remains had no meaning for
the explorers.

"Do we set up here?" Ross asked. "If we could just get a report to send
back...." That might mean the difference between awakening the
co-operation of the Project policy makers so that a flood of supplies
and personnel would begin to head their way.

"We set up here," Ashe decided.

He had selected a point between two of the lines where a reef would
provide them with a secure base. And once that decision was made, the
Terrans went into action.

Two days to go, to install the peep-probe and take some shots before the
ship had to clear with or without their evidence. Together Ross and Ashe
floated the installation out to the reef, Ui and Karara helping to tow
the equipment and parts, the dolphins lending pushing noses on occasion.
The aquatic mammals were as interested as the human beings they aided.
And in water their help was invaluable. Had dolphins developed hands,
Ross wondered fleetingly, would they have long ago wrested control of
their native world--or at least of its seas--from the human kind?

All the human beings worked with practiced ease, even while masked and
submerged, to set the probe in place, aiming it landward at the check
point of the Finger's protruding nail of rock. After Ashe made the final
adjustments, tested each and every part of the assembly, he gestured
them in.

Karara's swift hand movement asked a question, and Ashe's sonic
code-clicked in reply: "At twilight."

Yes, dusk was the proper time for using a peep-probe. To see without
risk of being sighted in return was their safeguard. Here Ashe had no
historical data to guide him. Their search for the former inhabitants
might be a long drawn-out process skipping across centuries as the
machine was adjusted to Terran time eras.

"When were they here?" Back on shore Karara shook out her hair, spread
it over her shoulders to dry. "How many hundred years back will the
probe return?"

"More likely thousands," Ross commented. "Where will you start, Gordon?"

Ashe brushed sand from the page of the notebook he had steadied against
one bent knee and gazed out at the reef where they had set the probe.

"Ten thousand years--"

"Why?" Karara wanted to know. "Why that exact figure?"

"We know that galacti