"They were like us once," said the Elder. "That is the story of my fathers' fathers--they were like us once, when all of us lived in the lowlands, the great plains toward the rivers. But that was in the first years." "What do you mean by the first years?" The Elder tried to answer. "It was a time of great things and great triumphs. No one was hungry and no one needed to hunt for food. Have you seen from the flying thing the vast glistening colored objects lying in the valleys? That is a part of it--that was left from the first years. People lived in piles of stones and the sun provided them with everything they needed. But it was long ago. It has no meaning now, no real meaning that I understand. For something happened that had to do with the sickness and our people fled from it. I had heard the old men of the clan, when I was a child, thirty years ago, attempt to explain what they remember their fathers telling them and they could not make it clear to me." "Thirty years ago. You were a child then?" "Yes, thirty years ago. That is an old age, older than most." "These children--?" "Two and three--with us they mature slowly. Among the Degraded they are old at twenty, older at twenty than I am at thirty." "Tell me," asked O'Hara, "what is Nedra's age?" "She has lived nine winters. This is the tenth of them." O'Hara felt as if the earth had shuddered under his feet. Nedra was ten--for a moment he thought that possibly they reckoned time differently, but the Elder's own words refuted that reasoning--nine winters! She was in her tenth year, mature--in many ways much more mature than women of his own world at the mating age, certainly without the protective claptrap of sentimentality and romantic misconceptions. Was it, then, strange that the degenerated emotions of old age were absent from these people? Passion and ferocity, which were the attributes of youth, but not malice and tenderness. When the life span was cut so short there was not time for these. Returning later to his cavern, he entered with a sense of active guilt, of shame, but the intricately carved wooden club was lying on the floor, significantly, and Nedra was waiting with that look of adoration that he now recognized as the adoration of a child's mind, but she was not a child--she was magnificently dangerous, splendidly strong and quick, knowing what she wanted, and without absurd squeamishness about it. "I am waiting for you, O'Hara." "Yes--I see you are. But never mind that club. We'll get along without it--" "How?" She asked it simply. She could not conceive of placid submission, nor, after that, could O'Hara. It was another turning point.