Still, the darkness was dispiriting. Toroca understood why the sun never seemed to rise very high in the sky, but that didn’t make it any less dreary. More and more people had taken to being up on deck at noon, to enjoy what little brightness and warmth there was. Conditions were crowded, but everyone strove to keep the mood light. Toward that end, the noontime swapping of jokes on the Dasheter’s foredeck had quickly become a tradition. Since people’s teeth were often chattering from the cold anyway, every joke, even the lamest, got a good reception.

"That’s awful," groaned Toroca in good humor to Biltog, a ship’s mate who had known his father. Biltog had just told the old groaner about the traveling doctor and the shovelmouth, which somehow Toroca had avoided hearing — mercifully, many would say — until now.

Surveyor Bar-Delplas was making a face. "Now, listen to a real joke, Biltog," she said. She saw Babnol coming toward them. "Hey, Babnol!" she called. "What do you call a hornface that’s had too much to eat?"

Babnol looked in her direction briefly, but continued on without a word.

"What’s with her?" Delplas asked Toroca.

"You swished your tail right into it, I’m afraid," said Toroca. "Babnol doesn’t like the word ’hornface.’ "

"Why not?"

Toroca tilted his head in the direction of the departing Babnol. "They called her that when she was a child."

Delplas shrugged, then went on with her joke. But Toroca paid no attention to the punch line, and instead stared after Babnol, all glee gone from him.

"Land ho!"

The shout went up from Biltog, once again up in the lookout bucket.

Except it wasn’t land that was ho. Toroca, Keenir, Babnol, and many others hurried up onto the Dasheter’s foredeck. Biltog’s greater elevation gave him a substantial advantage; it took some time for what he’d spotted to come into view.

For dekadays, the horizon had been nothing but gray water touching mauve sky. But at last there was a line, a bright white line, scintillating in the blazing sun.

As the Dasheter sailed closer, the line expanded into cliffs of bluish-white ice and hard-packed snow. Fissures cut through the ice at places, showing a cool blue interior.

Toroca watched in amazement as a great wall of ice fell away into the water, splashing up giant waves. As they came closer, he could see cracked sheets of ice jostling together along the rim of the solid snow-packed ice cap. He’d had no ideas what he might find here that could be useful for the exodus project, but, at first assessment, it looked like nothing at all was here except ice and snow.

Keenir wouldn’t bring the Dasheter any closer, lest one of the floating pieces of ice pierce its hull. Unfortunately the water here was too deep for the anchor. They sailed along, parallel to the ice edge, searching.

But then Keenir, who had been scanning the ice with his far-seer, motioned for Toroca to come close. He handed him the instrument. The brass tube was bitterly cold; Toroca was indeed thankful now for the strange handgear he’d been given to wear. He rotated the tube to bring the image into focus, then staggered back on his tail.

Something was moving around on the ice.

*19*

Musings of The Watcher

During the 460 million Crucible years it took for the Jijaki to evolve sentience on their world, a lot happened on the Crucible itself. Of those body plans that had originally appeared in that great, explosive diversification, one became predominant — the tube with a head at one end, a spinal cord, and, eventually, paired limbs. Soon the spinal cord was encased in a backbone — an interesting solution, so unlike that of my own ancestors. An age of fishes gave way to an age of amphibians, then one of reptiles.

Brain-body ratios increased as time went by. It seemed clear that eventually, joyously, intelligence would arise on the Crucible as well.

Before it did, though, a new form appeared, living in the shadows of the reptiles, tiny furred creatures that nursed their young.

It was wonderfully, terribly clear what was happening. Both the reptiles and the mammals were on their way to intelligence, and at about the same rate, too — the ratio of brain size to body size was increasing on a simple curve through time, and the scale-clad and fur-bearing creatures were both at the same point on that curve. The brightest of the reptiles and the brightest of the mammals soon had brains of equal, if as yet insignificant, power.

It would still take a long time for real intelligence to develop on this world — some 60 or 70 million Crucible years, I judged. But the mammals had already come up against a dead end. Intelligence, at least in the way these beings were trying to express it, required physical bulk — large, centralized, convoluted brains. The reptiles had long dominated every ecological niche for big animals; the rise of mammalian intelligence had ground to a halt.

Not one, but two potential paths to sentience. Yet only one of them, it seemed, could make it on this world.

I summoned the Jijaki.

The south pole

Toroca, Babnol, and Keenir headed toward the ice in a shore boat. It took Keenir a while to find a suitable place to land. Even so, he wasn’t able to anchor the boat properly, so he had to stay with it to keep it from drifting away and stranding them. Toroca and Babnol, clad from muzzle to tail in their strange, bulky garments, headed out onto the ice pack. The surface was covered with hard snow that cracked or squeaked when they stepped on it. Toroca was amazed at its texture, like frozen waves.

And the brightness! Glaring white, everywhere he looked. He found himself shielding his face with his arm. Even with his eyes narrowed to slits, it was still difficult to see.

As his eyes adjusted to the glare, Toroca was surprised to see that there were insects here: little black things that hopped across the snow. But it wasn’t those that had caught his attention from the deck of the Dasheter, but, rather, the strange creatures visible just ahead.

"Why don’t they run?" Babnol’s words were all but stolen away on the shrieking wind.

"What?" called Toroca.

"Why don’t they run from us?" she said again. "Aren’t they afraid?"

There were thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of the creatures covering the ice, each one like a drop of quicksilver in the low Antarctic sun.

"They don’t seem to be."

"How can they not be afraid of animals bigger than they are? Certainly, they have no way to defend themselves."

Toroca and Babnol stepped closer, the snow so hard that they left no footprints in it. "And look at the way they crowd together!" said Babnol. "They could touch each other without moving, if they wanted to. Have they no notion of territoriality?"

"Lots of herbivores herd."

"Excuse me, Toroca, you are the scholar, but, umm, there are no plants around, in case you hadn’t noticed. These creatures must be fish-eaters."

The creatures had little round bodies and strange heads that were drawn out into long points both off the front of the face and at the back of the head. There was no doubt that they had seen the approaching Quintaglios. Many had swiveled these heads toward Toroca and Babnol. But they seemed not in the least alarmed by the intruders. Toroca saw one slide lazily off the ice into the water. Others were preening themselves with their long prows.

For want of a better name, Toroca thought of these creatures as divers. They seemed to have no qualms about slipping into the freezing water, and when they went beneath the surface, Toroca lost all track of them. They were presumably diving deep.

There were only about twenty paces between Toroca and the closest of the divers now. Most of the divers were flopped on their bellies, but some stood fully erect, with thick flippers hanging at their sides. There was something red about halfway down the leading edge of each flipper, but Toroca couldn’t yet make out what it was.