Then, without warning, the missile ceased to be. Greenberg shouted and pounded his fist against his thigh. "Human ship Harold Meeker to Vengeance," Jennifer said. "Thank you." Still no answer came. Less than half a minute later, the Harold Meeker flashed into hyperdrive.
Snow clung to the ground wherever there was shadow. The distant mountains were cloaked in white halfway down from their peaks; a glacier came forth from them onto the nearer plains like a frozen tongue sticking out. Musk oxen and the larger dots that were mammoths moved slowly across those plains.
Jennifer shivered. The synthetic furs and hides she was wearing were not as warm as the real things. Her arms were bare; gooseflesh prickled up on them as she watched. Her breath came smoky from her nostrils. "They'd better hurry up, before I freeze to death," she said, making a miniature fogbank around her head with the words.
"Maybe there's such a thing as too much realism," Greenberg agreed through chattering teeth.
On the ground a few paces away from them lay the two humans they had brought back from the Foitani sphere. The CroMagnons were just on the point of coming out of cold sleep. The anthropologists at Saugus Central University had gone to a good deal of effort to make them as homelike an environment as possible in which to awaken. Putting the temperature somewhere below freezing struck Jennifer as excessive. Still, in trying to bridge the gap between Pleistocene and starship, who could say what detail might prove crucial?
The woman stirred. A few seconds later, so did the man. "Here we go," one of the anthropologists radioed into the little ear speakers Jennifer and Greenberg were wearing. "Remember, you people are the link between this familiar?we hope?place and what they've gone through. When they see you here, they ought to get the idea that they aren't really home, or not exactly, anyway."
"We'll see soon," Jennifer answered. Getting through to the primitives was going to be as hard as any first contact with an alien race. They'd have to learn a new language from scratch; not even theoretically reconstructed Ur-Indo-European went back even as far as a quarter of the way to their time.
The man sat up first. His eyes, at first, were only on the woman. When she opened her eyes and also managed to sit, his face glowed with relief. Then he noticed Jennifer and Greenberg. He rattled off something in his extinct speech.
"Hello. We're peaceful. We hope you are, too," Greenberg said in Spanglish. He held his hands out before him, palms up, to show they were empty. That was about as old a pacific gesture as humanity knew. Nobody could be sure, though, whether it went back to the Paleolithic. Everything the CroMagnons did taught researchers something.
The man didn't return the gesture, but he seemed to understand what it meant. He stood up and took a couple of steps forward to put himself between the woman and Greenberg and Jennifer. Then he spoke again, this time in a questioning tone. Jennifer made what she thought was a pretty fair guess at what he was saying. You were there in that strange place with those monsters. Now you're here. What's going on?
"Time for that special effect we were talking about," she whispered, for the benefit of the anthropologists outside.
Without warning, a holovid projection of a Foitan sprang into being, a few meters away from the primitives. The woman let out a piercing shriek. The man shouted, too, fear and fury mingling in his voice. He looked around wildly for a stone to throw.
"You!" Greenberg said in a commanding tone, stabbing out his forefinger at the alarmingly perfect image. "Go away and never come back!" He struck a pose that proclaimed he had every right to order the big, blue alien around so.
The projection winked out as if it had never been. The man and woman shouted again, this time in amazement. Then they both hurried over to Greenberg, embraced him, and pounded him on the back. He staggered under the joyful blows. "They're stronger than they think," he wheezed, trying to stay upright.
"Congratulations," the anthropologist said into his and Jennifer's ears. "You are now a powerful wizard."
"Good." Greenberg turned his head. "Ah, I see the second part of the demonstration is on its way."
Four plates floated toward the humans. Each one carried a thick steak, a couple of apples, and some ripe strawberries. The primitives needed another few seconds to spot them. Then they started exclaiming all over again.
Jennifer intercepted two of the plates, Greenberg the other two. She passed one to each Cro-Magnon, then unhooked a couple of knives from her belt and handed them to the primitives, too. She drew one more for herself. Greenberg had his own. She cut a chunk from her steak, stabbed it, and lifted it to her mouth. Fancy manners could come later.
Neither of the humans just out of cold sleep had recognized the metal knife for what it was?they were used to tools of bone and stone. But they caught on quickly. The man grunted in wonder as the keen blade slid through the meat. He grunted again, this time happily, when the first bite went into his mouth. Jennifer knew just how he felt. After so long on Foitani kibbles, every meal of honest food was a special treat.
The primitives made the steaks vanish in short order. They inhaled the strawberries and ate the apples cores, stems and all. When they saw that Greenberg and Jennifer didn't want their cores, they made questioning noises and reached out for them. Getting no rebuff, they ate them, too.
"Hunter-gatherers can't afford to waste any amount of food, no matter how small," the anthropologist said.
The man kept trying the edge of the knife with his thumb. The woman said something to him, rather sharply. With obvious reluctance, he held out the knife to Jennifer. The woman held out hers.
Jennifer shook her head as she made pushing noises. "No, they're yours to keep," she said.
When the primitives realized what she meant, they whooped with glee and pummeled her as they had Greenberg. The man also reached under her synthetic fur and squeezed her left breast. She knocked his hand away. He didn't try twice. She gave him points for getting the idea in a hurry.
She pointed to herself. "Jennifer," she said.
"Bernard." Greenberg did the same thing.
The man's eyes lit up. He thumped his own chest. "Nangar," he declared.
He spoke to the woman. "Loto," she said, touching herself.
"I wonder if those are names or if they just mean 'man' and 'woman,'" an anthropologist radioed to Jennifer and Greenberg. "Well, we'll find out soon enough."
Language lessons went on from there, with parts of the body and the names of things close by. Nangar seemed to have an easier time picking up Spanglish words than Loto did.
"Maybe the tribe next door spoke a different language," the anthropologist suggested. "We think men traveled more widely through a tribal range than women, so he could be more used to using different words than she is."
After a while, Nangar pointed to the distant herds, which were actually holovid projections on a not-so-distant wall. With his own speech and many gestures, he got across the idea of hunting and then feasting. He gazed confidently at Greenberg all the while. Jennifer said, "After you got rid of that Foitan, Bernard, he figures you can do anything."
Greenberg grinned wryly. "No matter how big a wizard I am, I don't think I can put much nourishment into a projection. Maybe it's time to distract him again." He spoke as much to the waiting anthropologists as to Jennifer.
A few seconds later, a couple of the scientists came out from behind a boulder. They wore modern cold-weather gear. Nangar and Loto drew back in alarm. "Friends," Jennifer said reassuringly. She went over and smiled at the newcomers, patting them on the back. So did Greenberg.
The primitives remained dubious until one of the anthropologists reached into her backpack and took out several pieces of roasted chicken. When she passed them to Loto and Nangar, she found that the way to their hearts lay through their stomachs. Although they'd eaten a good-sized meal not long before, they devoured the chicken and gnawed clean the bones the anthropologists discarded.