"If they are, we'll find ‘em. If we don't…" Shavva shrugged philosophically.

The next day they ventured as far as the ice cap in the southern hemisphere, taking samples of the frozen crust and as many layers of soil as the deep corer could manage to reach. Then they turned to the winter-held north. By then, Liu had become a bit paranoid about the lack of larger life-forms. So far, all they had seen were some reptiloids, scaled and basking.

"Quite large enough, thank you," Shavva had remarked, narrowly escaping the attentions of a ten-centimeter-thick, seven-meter-long example.

They also saw a great many more of Liu's flying barges.

"Wherries, that's what they were called," he said suddenly that afternoon. "Vessels that were used to ferry stuff between the English isle and the European continent. Wherries, and call ‘em the biggest life-forms seen in the report. Maybe the term'll stick." Liu rarely exercised that EEC team prerogative.

There were two identifiable types of the large avians, with raucous calls and the aggressive manners of predators; brilliantly plumed smaller fliers, a thousand types of what Shavva called "creepy-crawlies," both inland and littoral. They had also found eggshells on southern beaches, shards littering what were apparently sand-buried nests. Of the egg layers, or the previous occupants, there were no signs.

They did discover interesting fossil remains, a good fifty thousand years dead and gone, in an extensive tar pit; one specimen was intact enough to expose the ground-down dental machinery for grazing, suggesting that these fossils could have been the ruminants Liu wished to see. While the short, greenish spiky vegetation looked somewhat like grass, it wasn't, for it had no silicates, was visibly triangular in form, and was more blue than green.

"I want to see those grazers now, too," Liu said firmly. But he was somewhat relieved to find the necessary variety of life-forms at a different epoch on the planet.

They also located a diamond pipe just below the surface in the major rift valley fault. Rough stones, one as large as Shavva's fist, were pried out of the soil. The team kept several as souvenirs; they were not particularly valuable otherwise, for the galaxy had produced many gemstones more exotic than these, though diamonds remained useful in technology for their durability and strength.

"I find it rather a relief not to have to be constantly on guard," Ben said on their third night, when Liu began again on the disappearance theme. "Remember Closto, the L.A. in our last tour? I kept holding my breath, waiting for something else to latch on to me."

Liu snorted. "Absence is as ominous as presence, in my tapes."

"Could have been an axial tilt, you know, and what's now the ice caps were their homegrounds," Shavva suggested. "They got caught in the blizzards and froze. We do have ice cores, which could very well produce tissue and bone fragments."

"Well, this P.E. has only a fifteen-degree axial tilt; the probes set the magnetic poles very near the ecliptic north and south, maybe fifteen degrees away from tilt."

"We'll know when we get back to the ship and have a chance to study things. Are today's samples ready to go back to Castor?"

"Yeah, but I wish the fardles he'd sent us back his conclusions. He's had time." Liu scowled as he handed his latest containers to Ben to pack in the case to be launched back to the spacecraft.

"Maybe they all moved north," Ben said in a spirit of helpfulness.

"To winter?"

"This continent's not in full summer yet."

"Well, it'd never get hot enough to fry things, not with the prevailing winds this continent's got." Liu refused to be mollified.

On their way north they paused on the largest of a group of islands: basaltic, riddled with caves, bearing the profusion and lush growth common to tropical climes. They noted several unusual reptilian forms, more properly large herpetoids of truly revolting appearance.

"I've seen uglier ones," Ben remarked, examining at a safe distance one horny monster, seven centimeters broad and five high, which waved tentacles and claws in an aggressive manner. They could discern neither mouth nor eyes. The olfactor gave a stench reading; and the creature's back was covered with insectoid forms.

"External digestive system?" Shavva suggested, peering at the thing. "And—wow!"

The creature had sped forward suddenly, its nether end now covered with tiny barbs. At the same time, the olfactor reading went off the scale, and a repellent stench filled the little clearing.

"Look, it backed into that spiny plant," Ben said, pointing to the little bush. "And got shot in the ass."

Standing well back and using a long stick, Shavva nudged one of the remaining spines and was rewarded with a second launching.

"Well, a clever plant. Didn't just let loose in all directions. I wonder what would deactivate it?"

"Cold?" Liu suggested.

"There's a small one here," Shavva observed. She sprayed it with the cryo and gave it an exploratory prod. When it did not respond she packed it in a specimen box.

That evening, as they were readying the day's tube for Castor, Liu let out a whoop, holding up a glowing specimen tube for the others to see.

"That growth I found in the big cave. Some sort of luminous variety of mycelium." He covered it with his hand. "Indeed. Now you see it—" He opened his hand to let the tube glow again. "Now you don't." He closed his hand again, peering through thin cracks he permitted between two fingers. "Does oxygen trigger the luminosity?"

"You are not going back into the cave tonight, Liu," Shavva said sternly. "We don't have the spelunking equipment necessary to keep you from breaking your damned fool neck."

He shrugged. "Luminous lichens or organisms are not my forte." He carefully wrapped the tube in opaque plasfilm. "Don't want it to wear itself out before Castor sees it."

Later that night they were all enticed from their camp by the sound of cheeping and chittering. Parting the lush foliage that surrounded them, they peered out at an astonishing scene. Graceful creatures, totally different from the awkward avians seen in the southern hemisphere, were performing aerial acrobatics of astonishing complexity. The setting sun sparkled off green, blue, brown, bronze, and golden backs, and translucent wings glistened like airborne jewels.

"The seaside egg layers?" Shavva asked Liu in a whisper.

"Quite possibly," Liu replied softly. "Gorgeous. Look, they're playing a discernible game. Catch-me-if-you-can!"

For a long time, the three explorers watched the spectacle with delight until the creatures broke off their play as the swift tropical night darkened the skies.

"Sentient?" Shavva asked, wanting and yet not wanting those beautiful creatures to be the dominant sentient life form of this planet.

"Marginally," Liu murmured approvingly. "If they're leaving eggs on a shoreline where storm waters could wash them away, they're not possessed of very great intelligence."

"Just beauty," Ben said. "Perhaps we'll find large and related types of the same evolutionary ancestors for you, Liu."

Liu shrugged diffidently as he turned back to their campfire. "If we do, we do."

They made notes of what they had witnessed and then turned in for the night. The next day had them examining the reef systems jutting out from the island, and its smaller companions. A trip to the more tropical eastern peninsula showed them a complicated system, similar to coral, with fossils of the same thing going right back, Ben estimated, some five hundred million years. At least this was a viable ecology, not a stalemated tropical-rain-forest dense ecology, with the various elements, so to speak, taking in each other's washing. Such transitory ecologies did reinforce Ben's theory of a recent meteorite storm rather than an ice-age hiatus in evolution.