For here was
an anthropologist's dream: a young man who had lived among throwback
Neanderthals, who had carved his existence, without medicine or steel,
from the harsh realities of a world in which Man not only held no
exalted place, but was on the contrary smallish and ill-equipped, as
likely to be hunted as hunter. And the fact that he himself had emerged
from the recessed traits of three hundred generations, to be born fully
human..... They knew nothing yet of the Machine or the Visitors, only
that for most of his life Kalus had possessed no spoken language, had
been an outcast and object of suspicion because of his appearance and
greater intelligence, had met and shared deepest communion with a young
woman and fellow creature of the twenty-first century. And for now,
this was more than enough.
Dr. David Rawlings, cell biologist, spoke first, a strongly built,
intense black man in his mid thirties. Apparently the least abashed of
the company, he assumed the role he had chosen for himself, and which
the others now expected and took for granted.
'Well,' he said, moving to stand at the fore of the group. 'I
suppose first we should tell you something of ourselves.' And without
the wasted words of diplomacy, he did.
'You see before you the surviving crew members of Virgo II, the
manned exploration of Mars.
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