“This is the closest you have found to civilization? Creatures who live in multiple-story beaver houses and splash in puddles?”

“Don’t underestimate them, Ivo. They are technologically advanced. Ahead of us, actually. They’ve had the macroscope for a century.”

Ivo looked harder, but saw only a small domicile with several fat fishlike creatures lolling listlessly in what he was sure was tepid water. Now and then one squirted a jet of liquid from its trunk and slid backward — or perhaps forward — from the reaction. “Maybe you’d better give me some more background. I’m missing something.”

“I’ll give you their edited paleontology. We’ve been into their libraries and museums as well as their bedrooms — yes, they have all three, though not like ours — and we have copied some of their animated texts. We haven’t dubbed in any sound yet — this is still in progress — but I’ll provide the running commentary.” He switched from the live scene to film. “Behold: the species history of the proboscoids — ‘probs’ for short — of Sung.”

And Ivo was immersed in it, absorbing picture and commentary as one. He witnessed Sung as it had been millions of years in the past: mighty forests of ferns upon the land, and of sponges under the ocean. From that rich water came the lungfish types, gulping the moist dense atmosphere, and soon their soft egg-capsules hatched on land. Predators broke them open before the sun did, until survival dictated hatching within the body: live birth. Even then the tiny newborn were vulnerable, and natural selection brought forth at last the successful compromise: the placentile amphibian. This was the stem stock for the class of animal that was to dominate the planet. From its fifty-million-year radiation emerged its successor.

The primitive proboscoid was not an imposing order. Its families swam the shallow oceans by jetting water through their snouts, and climbed clumsily upon the shores with their flipper-fins. They were timid; their eyes were fixed upon the predators from whom they retreated, not upon their destinations. When they died, they died in flight, sometimes in panic, smashing into obstacles and killing themselves needlessly. Yet they were adept in motion; the funneled water could be aimed in any direction by a twist of the snout, and in some families it was impregnated with a foul-tasting substance that discouraged the pursuer. Their sense of smell sharpened; they were always alert to danger.

One genus retreated to the rocks of the treacherous surf, the area no other mobile creature desired for a habitat. The seas varied with the tide, and that tide of two near moons seemed to have a malignant passion. The great rounded rocks rolled about, crushing whatever lay beneath and wearing channels into the beach and ocean floor, then jumping into new territory as alternate currents converged and clashed. There was safety for neither land nor sea creature.

These probs became complete amphibians, their original breathing apparatus adaptable to either air or water and thriving on the combination. They developed the wit to read the shifting currents, to anticipate the tides, and to crawl from channel to channel when danger came. When large sea-predators ventured too far within the shoals, the probs arranged to divert certain currents and to isolate and perhaps strand the enemy. When land-dwellers set foot in the water, they too could be tempted into the traps of nature. Still timorous, the probs developed the taste for flesh.

Then the land uplifted and the shoals passed. It was the time of desperation for the probs, and few survived, for they could not compete with the established land and sea creatures in either complete habitat. One species, the cleverest, learned to make a home where nature provided none. Unable to run fleetly or swim swiftly or take to the air, it employed its still-generalized limbs to excavate trenches at the shoreline and to bring the water in. Labyrinths were formed, confusing to predators. Those who did enter found dead ends or narrow channels that inhibited progress, while stones were dumped upon them or shafts poked through cross-trenches.

Later those stones and shafts were adapted to construction, and the age of tools and weapons had come. The trunklike appendage, no longer required fully for locomotion, became refined for manipulation; the flippers lost what swimming facility they had had and became strong excavators. The brains increased in size. Communication of high order became essential. Air, vibrated through the snout, developed into a hornlike dialogue.

The labyrinth, in the course of a hundred thousand years, developed into something like a city.

Nature heaved again and the city was destroyed — but so were the habitats of many other creatures. The probs rebuilt; the less intelligent or adaptable animals perished. The probs lost much of their timidity, and their appetite for flesh increased.

Success brought population pressure, and the attendant demand for more food and more living space. In this manner the first colony was organized, instead of the prior lemminglike exoduses to relieve the situation. Perhaps the first successful colony was merely the last of the blind departures. It was not clear how individuals were selected to go or to stay, but a complete spectrum of builders, hunters and breeders were to be found in each party. The first colony settled several hundred miles away from the home grounds, upon another shoreline. The second went farther.

At last the shores of all the continents of the planet were riddled with maze-cities.

Now there was nothing shy about the probs. Large and sleek, they encroached upon the territories of ancient enemies. Organized and clever, they conquered. They brought their habitat with them inland, developing methods of pumping and aerating and holding water above the level of the sea. Technology had come upon them.

Greater and greater ingenuity was required as the terrain became less habitable. Rain fell less frequently, and better pumps were developed; edible animal life diminished, and better breeds had to be fostered. The prob snout could now be reversed, to grip objects by its suction and move them about, but it was weak; it became easier to use this slight strength and great dexterity to build machines, and to let the machines accomplish the heavy labors.

With the conquest of the continents and the continued decimation of the vegetation, animals and minerals there, the probs next turned their technology toward really efficient food production. Sea-farms provided meat; hydroponics replaced the rest. Their science expanded to meet the new challenges, and reached into the very sky and on into space. Yet this required enormous power, and their world was already depleted by the wasteful ravagement of centuries past. They sought to colonize another world, just as they had the shores and continents of Sung, but could not afford the time and equipment for prolonged and inefficient interstellar travel.

Yet technology continued, though their world was starving. They developed the macroscope — and shied away from its revelations. Their land surface was a mass of watery warrens, their ocean a thoroughly parceled plantation. Those who could not afford to pay their debts were butchered; those who could not achieve sufficient success in life gained a few years of rich living by selling their bodies in advance for meat. It was a fashionable and comfortable mode of suicide, and at present some fifty percent of the individuals sublimated their lemming-instinct in this fashion. Yet the birthrate, fostered by competent medicine and the basic boredom of life, was such, and the average span of life before termination so long, that the population still nudged upward. The irreplaceable resources of the planet plummeted.

“Why don’t they control their population?” Ivo demanded. “They’re breeding their way into extinction! Surely they can bring their birthrate down readily. They have the equipment for it.”