your cliffs will show fossils. Maybe we'll solve one problem in exchange for another. Life could be worse."

"Just hope we don't solve the first one by proving that certain geophysicists have been talking through their hats," the hitherto silent Krendall remarked.

"Eh?"

"What would you do if we found a chunk of, say, pegmatite with radioactive inclusions that checked out at half a billion years instead of the thirty-odd million you lads have been giving us as a time scale for this mudball?"

"I should check very carefully under what circumstances and in what location you found it. If necessary, I would admit that the problem had disappeared. Half a billion years would account reasonably well for the evolutionary status of this planet's life forms, though actually it took Earth a good deal longer to reach a corresponding condition. Frankly, however, I do not expect any such find. We spotted our borings rather carefully, and should have taken pretty representative samples."

"I'm sure you did. If your results are right, it just means that the problem belongs to Hans and me—and String here had better find us a lot of fossils."

"You'll have to find your own bones," McLaughlin replied. "I'm taking you to the sort of ground you want. A fossil would have to show its teeth in my face before I'd recognize it—and then I'd probably shoot before I realized it was dead."

"All right," Sulewayo chuckled. "You take care of the quick, and Krendall and I will worry about the dead. Dr. Lampert can figure out how old the fossils are if we find any, and Take can look for stone axes."

"Or automobiles, or pieces of space-drive tubes, or other artifacts," Mitsuitei answered the implied dig. "I plan to sit back and loaf, unless and until one of you lads turns up a skull that could have held more than half an ounce of brain. I am going to be very unscientific. I believe that there is nothing on this planet for an archeologist to do, and I am not going to work myself into a lather to prove myself wrong."

"You've formed an opinion rather early in the game," Lampert remarked. "After all, remarkably little of this world has been explored. Why should there not be traces of occupation in unknown areas such as we are about to visit?"

"Because, while most of the planet remains unexplored, a very large number of places which should have 

 Prev. P 12/59 next