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can be sure that those chosen for future expeditions will be much more deeply tested. But,' he added,
smiling, 'it will be too late for anybody on this expedition.'
'Why do you smile?'
'I'll tell you some day.'
The two tribes moved on along the coast of Morocco. Though it was cold, often below freezing, and
snow fell, the climate was not as rigorous as in Iberia. They marched more swiftly, but their halts were
longer, since the three scientists had enough to do to keep them in each area for six months. They took
thousands of photographs, made maps of the coastal areas, took samples of the soil and the water and
specimens of flora and fauna, from local bacteria and amoeba and earthworms up to the elephants. They
could not take the elephant bodies with them, of course, but Gribardsun and Rachel Silverstein did
random dissections and preserved tissue slides. They made Carbon-14 and xenonargon datings on the
spot with their equipment. They fished and then studied specimens before giving them over to the cooks.
The tribes living on the coast were generally small and lived by hunting and fishing. Rivers ran through
the Sahara and emptied into the western half of the Mediterranean. The river mouths were plentiful with
fish and seal and porpoise, and inland were the elephants and rhinoceroses, antelope and deer and goat,
horses, aurochs, and even bison. There were also lions and bears and leopards. Although the great snow
leopards existed in France and Iberia, Gribardsun had never seen one in those regions. But he had not
been in Africa more than a week before he glimpsed three at a distance.
The natives were larger than the Arab-Berber type of the modern era but somewhat smaller,
thinner-boned and darker than the modern Europeans. They were also longer-headed and tended
toward aquiline faces. So far, no Negroes had been encountered nor had any of the Africans ever heard
of black men.
'It's too late, even in 12,000 B.C., to determine the origin of the Negro race,' Gribardsun said. 'I
don't suppose we'll ever know if it's true that they arose somewhere in southern Asia and then migrated
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to Africa and Austronesia and were killed off or absorbed on the Asiatic mainland. Or if they originated
in Africa and then, somehow, some migrated to New Guinea and Melanesia, leaving damn few traces
along the trail. Even so, we might learn something if we could explore East Africa now and learn what
types are living there. I suspect there'd be some Caucasoid and Capsoid types and perhaps some
Negritos.'
'You surely aren't thinking of taking us down there?' Rachel said.
'I would object,' von Billmann said. 'That would take us entirely too far from the vessel; it would
definitely imperil the expedition. Moreover, if we're going to roam far and wide, we should be doing it in
central Europe, preferably somewhere between the Elbe and Vistula. We should be ascertaining whether
proto-Indo-Hittite speech exists there, or ...'
Gribardsun smiled but shook his head. 'You're the greatest linguist of the twenty-first century, Robert,
and you have a very high intelligence. But I have to keep reminding you that those rivers are buried under
vast masses of ice. If you ever did find your proto-I-H-speakers, it would be somewhere to the south.
Maybe in Italy. Or in France, a few miles from where the vessel emerged. Or maybe on this coast, a few
miles ahead of us. Or behind us, a few miles inland.'
Von Billmann laughed, but his face was red. 'I know,' he said. 'But that's my blind spot. My brain
slips a cog every time I think of my love. I know that glaciers cover that area, but I'm so eager to locate
my language, my beloved language, that I forgot. But I have a hunch, an intuition, worthless perhaps and
only the expression of a wish, that my speakers are living not too far to the south of the glaciers, perhaps
in Czechoslovakia.'
'Next year, if circumstances permit, we'll go. to Czechoslovakia,' Gribardsun said. 'We have to study
the edges of the glaciers, anyway. And if we can go to North Africa, we can certainly go to central
Europe.'
Von Billmann had never looked so happy.
The tribes moved on slowly eastward. By now they could communicate fairly well with signs and a
mixture of each other's vocabulary. The structure of the two languages was dissimilar, and each contained
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