"We hated you--oh, God, how we hated! Imagine the hate you'd feel toward a race from Mars that came and overran your planet and stamped out your folk till only a pitiful handful were left. Man had come and usurped _our_ earth, hadn't he? So the blood remembered, and hated." Bill Cuff laughed suddenly. "Ray, I'm not mad, as you were just thinking. I offer you that as proof: we are to a degree telepathic. All of us. Yet _men_ are not. "It's true. _We are the Neanderthals. We are not human. And we have returned to take back our inheritance, which is the world!_" CHAPTER III He allowed me to sit without speaking for the space of about ten minutes. I needed that time. I had to go all over what he'd said, consider each statement, try to forget that it sounded like fantasy, try to realize that Bill Cuff and Lord knew how many others of the so-called Old Companions believed this yarn with their whole energies. I had to take the tale and consider it in its entirety, as a broad concept which might be true, and then I had to grit my teeth and look at the significance of it as if by some incredible, wild chance it _were_ true.... The significance was horrible, of course, but it was doubly or rather trebly awful for me personally, because Bill Cuff was my cousin. His father, who'd died before Bill was born, had been my mother's brother. And the reason I say it was trebly bad for me was that upstairs my wife Nessa lay asleep, and stirring in her was our child. And if Bill Cuff was right, then that child and I myself came of a race that was only partly human; and neither of us could call ourselves by the proud title of Man. At the end of ten minutes, the creature called Old One roused himself and gave a grunt. It seemed to be a two-syllable word, but of no language I ever knew. Bill Cuff nodded and replied, "Yes he does, Old One," showing that it had actually conveyed meaning. I looked again at that ferocious mask, and I think I began believing Bill Cuff's story with an intelligent awareness of its truth, right them. Old One was a Neanderthal. Only a blind idiot could have doubted it. "Now here's the reason I've come here to tell you this," began Bill Cuff, and I waved a hand to stop him. "I know why," I said huskily. "We're cousins. You think the same blood may run in my veins." "It does without a doubt. You see, I've checked on my mother, who's still living; and she isn't a carrier. So it was my father--your uncle. And you may not have the memory, Ray, but you have the blood. You're Neanderthal too." "So you want me to come out to the swamps and join you?" Bill Cuff flung himself onto the couch beside me, leaning near, breathing into my face. His breath smelled like raw meat, or maybe it was my imagination. He said, his voice a rumbling growl, "No, that isn't why I came. I want to find Howard. And I think you know where he is." My belly contracted and my palms that were already damp became clammy.