The mountains bulked massively over them. The snow-sheathed slopes and bare rock cliffs reared steeply upward like a titan’s wall. For several minutes, the skimmer cruised along that wall, then swung directly toward it where a glacier oozed from a narrow valley down onto the plain.
The glacier’s front was like a cliff, sheer and awesome, leaning outward. Berg-sized fragments, broken from it, lay in rubble at its feet. Engine snarling, the skimmer rose before the pebble-pocked wall.
Strong, battering bursts of wind hit the craft as it cleared the edge. Its engine screamed as it forced its way forward into the cold air flowing down from the mountains. Yawning fissures and dark, rippling veins of embedded pebbles streaked past beneath them.
Hitchcock lifted his camera again. The glacier imprinted itself on his tape. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“The other side of the mountains,” Muller said. “Where the floppers are.”
Hitchcock looked up at the mountains. The valley had curved. Mountains rose skyward all around them.
“But aren’t floppers—” How he hated that silly word! “Don’t floppers live back there?”
“Not many,” Muller said. “That section of coast is cut off from the rest, and there’s nothing to live on in winter. Mostly, they stick to the snow country.”
“Snow country?” It sounded ominous. “How can they live?”
“They get along,” Muller said.
The glacier swelled upward steeply where it squeezed between two mountain shoulders. The skimmer sailed loftily over the crest—flew on into the heart of the mountains.
“How?” Hitchcock demanded. “What do they live on?”
‘They take in each other’s wash,” Muller said.
“I don’t understand,” Hitchcock said blankly.
“They gnaw each other’s bones. Put it that way.”
The skimmer descended from the mountains to a land of low hills smothered in snow. The sky was cloudlessly blue, and sunlight shimmered blindingly on the frozen, white wasteland. Hitchcock adjusted his camera to minimum sensitivity, to compensate for the glare.
“There it is,” Muller said. “Flopper country.”
Hitchcock thought of a baron showing off his domain from a castle’s wall. “Where are they?” he asked.
Muller snorted. “Oh, they’re out there. But it’s a lot of land, and not many floppers. Our last census put it at about one for every twenty square miles. And without a body heat spotter, half the time you don’t see ‘em.” He handed Hitchcock a pair of sun goggles.
The skimmer struck out across the rolling land. It stayed high over the hills. “The traps don’t signal,” the pilot announced. “Check ‘em anyway?”
“Naw. Skip it,” Muller grumbled. “Just waste our time.”
He twisted around to speak to Hitchcock. ‘Traps don’t catch much, these days,” he said. “They’re getting too smart to get caught.”
“Oh?” Hitchcock asked, interested.
“We use pit traps,” Muller explained. “Any other kind’d be no good in this kind of country. They caught a lot of ‘em, a couple hundred years ago. Not any more.”
“I see,” Hitchcock said. He was almost delighted. At least the creatures weren’t completely at the mercy of these men.
“You know what I think?” Muller confided. “I think all we ever caught was dumb ones—the smart ones knew enough not to get caught. Now the dumb ones’ve died out— there’s nothing but smart ones left. So we don’t catch ‘em. Not with traps, anyhow.”
“But you catch them?” Hitchcock inferred.
“Yeah. Sometimes,” Muller said. He called forward to the pilot. “Head for that place we found all the tracks last week. Maybe they’ll still be around.”
“How?” Hitchcock asked. “How do you catch them?”
“You’ll see,” Muller answered. He rummaged in a compartment under his feet and brought out a net. He unfolded it and laid it in a long, narrow roll on the cowling beside himself and Hitchcock, up against the cockpit’s transparent canopy. He hooked lanyards from the exposed corners to grommets inside the cockpit, just under the rim.
“Dr. Muller,” Hitchcock said, almost pleading, “haven’t you done anything to help these poor creatures? Do you simply let them live in this horrible country? And starve? Freeze? Die—?”
”Why not?” Muller wondered. “They’re just a bunch of animals.”
“Why... why it’s your human duty,” Hitchcock protested, shuddering.
“Look,” Muller said with a firm, inflexible patience. “We’re scientists. We’re here to study these critters—watch ‘em and see if they evolve. If we tried to help ‘em, we’d mess things up. We couldn’t tell what happened naturally and what happened because we made it happen. Anyway, they’re no worse off than if we hadn’t discovered this planet.”
“Dr. Muller,” Hitchcock said, condemnation in his tone, “you haven’t one spark of humanity in you.”
Muller laughed. “Good thing I don’t, or I’d be no good here,” he said. “Look, mister. These critters have it hard— they’ve got to live in this country, or they die. And if they live, it’s because they’ve adapted. And if they adapt, it’s because they’re evolving. Do you want to get in the way of that? Do you?”
“It’s indecent!” Hitchcock sputtered. “Criminal! You’d let these poor creatures die and... and suffer without lifting a hand! Why, they have the same right to live that you do. I will see them granted that right.”
“Go ahead,” Muller sneered. “Just don’t interfere with our work. This here’s the biggest project in the universe.”
“Tracks,” the pilot reported.
Hitchcock looked out. Far below, a thin trail threaded across the crest of a low hill and down a steep slope. The skimmer paused and settled groundwards. The trail became the dragging tracks of a clumsy, struggling animal—the flattish footprints close-spaced and scuffed, as if the feet had not been lifted clear of the snow.
“It’s a flopper, all right,” Muller decided. “Cruise around —let’s see if there’s more.”
The pilot kept them low. They followed the low ridge and crossed several more trails, all of them headed in the same direction. “Looks like a hunting pack to me,” the pilot judged.
“That’s what it is,” Muller confirmed. And to Hitchcock, “They just started hunting like this about forty years ago. Most of ‘em still hunt by themselves, but every once in a while we find signs of ‘em working together—like this.”
Hitchcock let his camera scan the pattern of tracks in the snow. “Is it significant?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Muller said. “They’re not gregarious critters. Like I said, most of ‘em hunt by themselves. This is the first sign we’ve had of ‘em getting together—they’re developing a social sense.”
“Civilization?” Hitchcock wondered, awed.
“It’s the start of it,” Muller said. “Right here.”
The pilot had turned the skimmer to follow the hunting pack. Muller pointed down at one of the trails in the snow. “That’s the tracks of the thing they’re after.”
It looked very much like the other trails—slightly messier, with the footprints overlapping in a complicated pattern. Hitchcock gave his camera a long, careful look while the skimmer swept up the slope of the low hill and down the other side into the deep valley.
“It’s just another sign they’re turning smart,” Muller said. ‘Them hunting in packs, I mean. That’s evolution working. It takes brains to stay alive in a country like this.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Hitchcock wondered, “that this is why you refuse to help them—so you can watch their desperate struggles? To... satisfy your own curiosity?”
“Sure,” Muller said. He sounded very satisfied with himself. “Can you think of a better reason? Besides, we may have to fight ‘em some day. It’ll be a good idea to know all we can about ‘em.”