The summer passed swiftly, the short autumn of the glacial age was upon them. Gribardsun had by then apparently given up the idea, at least temporarily, of traveling to the south. There was so much to be done in this little area that it would have seemed shirking their duties to travel elsewhere.

Gribardsun's study of the Wota'shaimg language had so far revealed a vocabulary of more 'words' than he would have expected. He was convinced that there were at least that many more. Although it was a poor language for communicating intellectual ideas, it was surprisingly versatile in words for emotions, sensations, and impressions. And, it had a highly technical language for those things most important to the Wota'shaimg: hunting, fishing, various types of animals and stones, shades of light, kinds of snow and ice.

Their numeral system went up to twenty, and past that they used the word for 'many.' But they could describe exactly each member of a group exceeding the number of twenty, some of them being able to list with all necessary distinguishing features each bison of a herd of forty.

They all had a phenomenal ability for reciting long tales and certain common magical formulae. Wazwim, the singer, could chant four thousand lines of a poem without prompting. He did this three times over a period of two months for Gribardsun, and his lines seldom varied. However, whenever he thought of an improvement, he would promptly make it then and there.

The chant was only roughly a poem. The feet were based on quantity, though far removed from the classical Latin or Greek quantity. The line was roughly composed of a sort of trochaic hexameter. There was no rhyme but much alliteration. Nor could the poem be called an epic in the true sense of the word. It was a loose collection of narratives of heroes and totem animals and evil spirits intermixed with magical formulae and folk wisdom. The closest parallel to the 'epics' that modern man knew was the Finnish Kalevala. Everything had taken place long long ago, starting, in fact, before the creation of the universe and continuing up until a dozen generations ago, when the last of the heroes had died. Men today were only ordinary men, according to the song, weaklings and poor-spirited. They didn't make men like they did in the old days.

Gribardsun was surprised that such a small, technologically retarded society could have produced such a relatively sophisticated poem; and with, for all its serviceable flexibility, a nonetheless essentially primitive vocabulary. Its existence in such a society went against all, that he knew and had been taught. He said as much.

'That's the frustrating thing about the limitations of time travel,' Drummond said. 'We can't go even farther back to check out the origin and the development of the so-called epic. Or of anything.'

Gribardsun nodded, but he did not seem too unhappy about it. It was obvious that he was, in fact, very happy. He went out hunting with the others, or sometimes alone, and he always came back with meat. He seldom used his modern weapons but confined himself to using the tribal ones. He broke his own rule only when a big animal charged and made it necessary to use a rifle. Or when he went bird hunting. There were enormous flocks of ducks and geese settled around the lakes, and he went out happily dawn after dawn to hunt these. At first he killed them with a small spear or stones from a sling, or trapped them. But he occasionally took a shotgun and brought down dozens in one day.

'This is a paradise!' he said one evening to the Silversteins. 'A world such as it should be! Damned few humans, and an abundance of wild life! And yet this place is barren compared to what Africa must be! We must go down there when spring comes!'

Drummond sometimes felt like remonstrating with Gribardsun. He thought that the Englishman spent too much time hunting when he should have been doing his scientific work. But Rachel said that he was learning the inner intimate life of the tribe by participating in their activities - not just by observations. Moreover, could Drummond truthfully say that Gribardsun had neglected any of his scientific work?

Every second day, von Billmann reported via their tiny transceivers. By the time the first snows came, he had recorded and noted enough of the language to keep him busy for years. He had also succeeded in gaining some fluency in the strange whispering speech.

'I'll be coming tomorrow,' he said. 'Leaving here, that is. They're giving a big shindig for me tonight. We'll be eating mammoth and bison and horse meat, lots of duck, and plenty of berries and greens. And that fermented berry and fruit juice I told you about. It tastes like hell, but it sure packs a punch.'

That was another unexpected discovery. It had not been suspected that alcohol had been made so early. But the knowledge of alcohol was apparently not extensive as yet. The Wota'shaimg, for instance, knew nothing of it.

The main reason that von Billmann was returning, aside from his longing for civilized companionship, was that the Wotagrub were moving out.

This was another discovery that went against the supposed facts. It had been assumed that they roamed during the warm seasons and holed up in caves or under overhangs during the winter. The arctic winters of middle Europe were surely too harsh to permit much movement by humans.

But the Eskimos traveled over the arctic ice and lived off it during the winter. They were integrated with their environment. They had all the technology needed to enable them to cope with it. And so had the Magdalenians.

Sometimes, the tribes did hole up in one place all winter, if there was enough game in the area to support them. But when the game became scarce, the tribe packed its tents and belongings and went wherever the herds went. The game was getting scarce around here, partly because of the strangers' magical weapons. Everybody had eaten very well indeed, and fewer babies had died. But the big animals, the mammoths and the rhinos, had been scared out. They were becoming scarcer every year, anyway. The bison and the horses had moved on to some other area. The ibex were scarce for some reason. Even the great predators, the cave bear and the cave lion, had been killed or decided that the area was unsafe for them. And the reindeer had cropped up all the lichen and fungi and moved on.

Gribardsun solved the conflicting problems of remaining with the tribe to study them intensively and of exploring the land to the south.

Knowing that the tribesmen talked much among themselves of their dreams, and that they depended much on Glamug to interpret their dreams for them, Gribardsun planted the idea of going south. He described how much easier life would be where the snows weren't so deep, and soon some people did dream of traveling far south. They discussed these dreams among themselves and then went to Glamug with them.

Several had dreamed that Gribardsun led them south. Since the dreams were obviously wishes, and since they felt protected and provided for under Gribardsun, they wished him to conduct them into the paradise.

Glamug came to the Englishman and told him of what his people had dreamed. Gribardsun agreed with Glamug's analysis. Yes, he would be happy to guide them into the unknown lands to the south. They should start as soon as the long gray vessel was hauled up to the top of the hill and secured.

The ground was frozen, and a thin coat of ice had covered it after a partial snow. Even though they had gotten over most of their awe of the travelers themselves - though they retained all the original respect - they had never approached the vessel. Now, under Gribardsun's urgings, they poled over the vessel until they had it on wooden and bone sleds. Ivory and bone wedges were driven into the slots on top of the sleds to keep the vessel from rolling off.