"It's quite warm," Shilohin commented to Hunt as they walked. "And yet there's no sign of melting on the walls. How come?"

"The air-circulation system's been carefully designed," he informed her. "The warmer air is confined down here in the working area and screened off from the ice by curtains of cold air blowing upward all round the sides to extractors up in the roof. The way the walls are shaped to blend into the roof produces the right flow pattern. The system works quite well."

"Ingenious," she murmured.

"What about the explosion risk from dissolved gases being released from the ice?" another Ganymean asked. "I'd have thought there'd be a hazard there."

"When the excavations were first started it was a problem," Hunt answered. "That was when most of the melting was being done. Everybody had to work in suits down here then. They were using an argon atmosphere for exactly the reason you just mentioned. Now that the ventilation's been improved there's not really a big risk anymore so we can be a bit more comfortable. The cold-air curtains help a lot too; they keep the rate of gas-escape down pretty well to zero and what little there is gets swept away upward. The chances of a bang down here are probably less than the base up top getting clobbered by a stray meteorite."

"Well, here we are," Mills announced from the front. They were standing at the foot of a broad, shallow metal ramp that rose from the floor and disappeared through a mass of cabling up into a large aperture cut in the hull. Above them, the bulging contour of the ship's side soared in a monstrous curve that swept over and out of sight toward the roof. Suddenly they were like mice staring up at the underside of a garden roller.

"Let's go in then," Hunt said.

For the next two hours they walked every inch of the labyrinth of footways and catwalks that had been built inside the craft, which had come to rest on its side and offered few horizontal surfaces of its own upon which it was possible to move easily. The Giants followed the cable-runs and the ducting with eyes that obviously knew what they were looking for. Every now and then they stopped to dismantle an item of particular interest with sure and practiced fingers or to trace the connections to a device or component. They absorbed every detail of the plans supplied by UNSA scientists, which showed as much as the Earthmen could deduce of the vessel's design and structure.

After a long dialogue with ZORAC to analyze the results of these observations, Jassilane announced, "We are optimistic. The chances of restoring the Shapieron to a fully functional condition seem good. We'd like to conduct a far more detailed study of certain parts of this ship, however--one that would involve more of our technical experts from Main. Could you accommodate a small group of our people here for, say, two or three weeks?" He addressed these last words to Mills. The commander shrugged and opened his hands.

"Whatever you want. Consider it done," he replied.

Within an hour of the party's return to the surface for a meal, another UNSA transporter was on its way north from Main bringing more Ganymeans and the necessary tools and instruments from the Shapieron.

Later on, they went to the biological laboratories section of the base and admired Danchekker's indoor garden. They confirmed that the plants he had cultivated were familiar to them and represented types that were widespread in the equatorial regions of the Minerva they had known. At the professor's insistence they accepted some cuttings to be taken back to the Shapieron and grown there as mementoes of their home. The gesture seemed to affect them deeply.

Danchekker then led the party down into a large storage room excavated out of the solid ice below the biological labs. They emerged into a spacious, well-lit area, the walls of which were lined with shelving that carried a miscellany of supplies and instruments; there were rows of closed storage cupboards all painted a uniform green, unrecognizable machines draped in dustcovers, and in places stacks of unopened packing cases reaching almost to the ceiling. But the sight that immediately captured every eye was that of the beast towering before them about twenty feet from the doorway.

It stood over eighteen feet high at the shoulder on four tree-trunk-like legs, its massive body tapering at the front into a long sturdy neck to carry its relatively small but ruggedly formed head high and well forward. Its skin was grayish and appeared rough and leathery, twisting into deep, heavy wrinkles that girded the base of its neck and the underside of its head below its short, erect ears. Over two enormous flared nostrils and a yawning parrot-beak-like mouth, the eyes were wide and staring. They were accentuated by thick folds of skin above, and directed straight down to stare at the door.

"This is one of my favorites," Danchekker informed them breezily as he walked forward at the head of the party to pat the beast fondly on the front of one of its massive forelegs.

"Baluchitherium--a late-Oligocene to early-Miocene Asian ancestor of modern rhinoceroses. In this species the front feet have already lost their fourth toe and adopted a three-toed structure similar to the hind feet--a trend which had become well pronounced in the Oligocene. Also, the strengthening of the upper-jaw structure here is quite developed, although this particular breed did not evolve into a true horned variety, as you can see. Another interesting point is the teeth, which--" Danchekker stopped speaking abruptly as he turned to face his audience and realized that only the Earthmen had followed him into the room to stand around the specimen he was describing. The Ganymeans had come to a standstill in a close huddle just inside the door, where they stood staring speechless up at the towering shape of Baluchitherium. Their eyes were opened wide as if frozen in disbelief. They were not exactly cowering at the sight, but the expressions on their faces and their tense stances signaled uncertainty and apprehension.

"Is something the matter?" Danchekker asked, puzzled. There was no response. "It's quite harmless, I assure you," he went on, making his voice reassuring. "And very, very dead. . . one of the samples preserved in the large canisters that were found in the ship. It's been very dead for at least twenty-five million years."

The Ganymeans slowly returned to life. Still silent and somehow subdued, they began moving cautiously toward the spot where the Earthmen were standing in a loose semicircle. For a long time they gazed at the immense creature, absorbing every detail in awed fascination.

"ZORAC," Hunt muttered quietly into his throat mike. The rest of the Earthmen were watching the Ganymeans silently, waiting for some signal to resume their dialogue and not sure yet what exactly it was that was affecting their guests so strongly.

"Yes, Vic?" the machine answered in his ear.

"What's the problem?"

"The Ganymeans have not seen an animal comparable to Baluchitherium before. It is a new and unexpected experience."

"Does it come as a surprise to you too?" Hunt asked.

"No. I recognize it as being very similar to other early terrestrial species recorded in my archives. The information came from Ganymean expeditions to Earth that took place before the time of the Shapieron's departure from Minerva. None of the Ganymeans with you at Pithead has ever been to Earth, however."

"But surely they must know something about what those expeditions found," Hunt insisted. "The reports must have been published."

"True," ZORAC agreed. "But it's one thing to read a report about animals like that, and another to come face to face with one suddenly, especially when you're not expecting it. I suppose that if I were an organic intelligence that had evolved from a survival-dominated organic evolutionary system, and possessed all the conditioned emotional responses that implies, I'd be a bit shocked too."