c ships crashed on Terra then. So their commerce
and empire--if it was an empire--was far-flung at that time. Perhaps
they were at the zenith of their civilization; perhaps they were already
on the down slope. I do not think they were near the beginning. So that
date is as good a starting place as any. If we don't hit what we're
after, then we can move forward until we do."

"Do you think that there ever was a native population here?"

"Might have been."

"But without any large land animals, no modern traces of any," she
protested.

"Of people?" Ashe shrugged. "Good answers for both. Suppose there was a
world-wide epidemic of proportions to wipe out a species. Or a war in
which they used forces beyond our comprehension to alter the whole face
of this planet, which did happen--the alteration, I mean. Several things
could have removed intelligent life. Then such species as the burrowers
could have developed or evolved from smaller, more primitive types."

"Those ape-things we found on the desert planet." Ross thought back to
their first voyage on the homing derelict. "Maybe they had once been men
and were degenerating. And the winged people, they could have been less
than men on their way up----"

"Ape-things ... winged people?" Karara interrupted. "Tell me!"

There was something imperious in her demand, but Ross found himself
describing in detail their past adventures, first on the world of sand
and sealed structures where the derelict had rested for a purpose its
involuntary passengers had never understood, and then of the Terrans'
limited exploration of that other planet which might have been the
capital world of a far-flung stellar empire. There they had made a pact
with a winged people living in the huge buildings of a jungle-choked
city.

"But you see"--the Polynesian girl turned to Ashe when Ross had
finished--"you did find them--these ape-things and the winged people.
But here there are only the dragons and the burrowers. Are they the
start or the finish? I want to know--"

"Why?" Ashe asked.

"Not just because I am curious, though I am that also, but because we,
too, must have a beginning and an end. Did we come up from the seas,
rise to know and feel and think, just to return to such beginning at our
end? If your winged people were climbing and your ape-things
descending"--she shook her head--"it would be frightening to hold a cord
of life, both ends in your hands. Is it good for us to see such thing