fficulty. Then you will just use the peep-probe?"

"Probably. Oh, maybe later on we can scout through a gate. We have the
material to set one up. But it would be a strictly limited project,
allowing no chance of being caught. Maybe the big brains back home can
take peep-data and work out some basis of infiltration for us from it."

"But that would take years!"

"I suppose so. Only you begin to swim in the shallows, don't you--not by
jumping off a cliff!"

She laughed. "True enough! However, even a look into the past might
solve part of the big mystery."

Ross grunted and stretched out to follow Ashe's example. But behind his
closed eyes his brain was busy, and he did not cultivate the patience he
needed. Peep-probes were all right, but Karara had a point. You wanted
more than a small window into a mystery, you wanted a part in solving
it.

The setting of the sun deepened rose to red, made a dripping wine-hued
banner of most of the sky, so that under it they moved in a crimson sea,
looked back at an island where shadows were embers instead of ashes.
Three humans, two dolphins, and a machine mounted on a reef which might
not even have existed in the time they sought. Ashe made his final
adjustments, and then his finger pressed a button and they watched the
vista-plate no larger than the palms of two hands.

Nothing, a dull gray nothing! Something must have gone wrong with their
assembly work. Ross touched Ashe's shoulder. But now there were shadows
gathering on the plate, thickening, to sharpen into a distinct picture.

It was still the sunset hour they watched. But somehow the colors were
paler, less red and sullen than the ones about them in the here and now.
And they were not seeing the isle toward which the probe had been aimed;
they were looking at a rugged coastline where cliffs lifted well above
the beach-strand. While on those cliffs--! Ross had not realized Karara
had reached out to grasp his arm until her nails bit into his flesh. And
even then he was hardly aware of the pain. Because there was a building
on the cliff!

Massive walls of native rock reared in outward defenses, culminating in
towers. And from the high point of one tower the pointed tail of a
banner cracked in the wind. There was a headland of rock reaching out,
not toward them but to the north, and rounding that....

"War canoe!" Karara exclaimed, but Ross had another identification:

"Longboat!"

In reality, the vessel was neither o