"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical ancestor?" Emmer didn't look like the genius he was--a Neanderthal genius, but nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy hands through shaggier hair. "I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of their camp." "I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all humans--late or early and male or female--look remarkably alike. If you are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?" * * * * * Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures? Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were forty feet high." "Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?" "Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all, not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five thousand years--and not one of them died that we have a record of." "A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta. "But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?" "Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found. Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us did." "This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.