"Leopards?" asked Vaemar. "I remember, they are . . ."
"Big cats. Fighting such creatures is a good way to sort out the cleverest as survivors."
"I see."
"The caves were like a great womb they never had to leave, and in which they had almost no need to develop. Possibly the radiation from the Pak ships and engines on Earth also caused mutations that didn't occur here. Anyway, these breeders on Wunderland didn't need many brains. They also escaped the worst of the meteor impacts that have obviously affected evolution on the surface here. In fact the meteor-impacts would probably have helped them by changing water-levels and giving the caves more suspended tables and more habitable layers of chambers.
"In this gravity they were well-muscled and already well suited for leaping and clinging to stalactites and so forth. Once their eyes and other senses adapted to the dark, their evolution must have almost ceased, as it has with many life-forms in Earth caves. On Earth there is a species of crustacean found in caves in Australia whose close relatives live in caves in the Canary Islands and the Carribean. They hardly changed in the time continental drift separated them so far."
Rykermann nodded.
"Earth scientists think Homo sapiens is not all Pak in its inheritance," he said. "The theory is that the original Pak Protectors probably modified the breeder population to better fit the Earth ecosystem and biochemistry. Sewed in the genetic material of Earth primates. That is why humans seem to fit well into the Earth animal kingdom. . . . It also raises the possibility that the breeders on Wunderland were not so modified, or modified differently. It's patently obvious that they have never developed anything resembling a civilization. We three know that all too well. Predatory bands, with rudimentary stone weapons, almost entirely carnivorous . . ."
Rykermann went to a collecting pannier.
"And there is your latest specimen, Vaemar." He produced a translucent container and handed it to his pupil. "It is dry and withered, but . . ."
Vaemar turned the thing over. "A Morlock infant or late-term fetus. A mummy."
"Or a human infant or fetus, perhaps?"
"It could be, I suppose," said Leonie. "There were children who took refuge in the caves during the war. Maybe this was a stillbirth. Or an abortion by some poor child. They had no birth control."
"Damaged as it is," said Rykermann, "it has sufficient characteristics of both species to puzzle us as to its identification, does it not? I think it may be a hybrid. A human-Morlock hybrid, not carried to term. And humans and Morlocks are meant to have evolved under different stars. It should be as impossible as . . . as a human-Kzin hybrid. Add that to the DNA profiles. Anyway, Vaemar, just let me know if the stuff's still there, and sealed. Obviously, take all precautions for dealing with dangerous material. And don't forget there's radioactive material there as well."
"What you say about Early—" said Vaemar. "Are the Protectors so dangerous? I would have thought we had the power to conquer them."
"Yes," said Rykermann. "They are so dangerous. Arthur's told me quite a lot, apart from what Earth sent us. The one human Protector we know of, Brennan, was a Sol Belter, an evolved, modern man, the product of many generations of civilization and science and imbued with the values of benevolence and cooperation that are part of all the great human religious and ethical systems. Also, fortunately, he was a good man.
"When he became a Protector he adopted the entire human race and his interventions in human affairs were benevolent as well as secret. He probably saved Earth from perishing in war, over-population and pollution, even if he then nearly killed us with kindness by making us almost too gentle and pacifist to resist when your lot came calling. Morlock Protectors, it's safe to bet, wouldn't be like that."
Leonie gave a sort of jerk, and nearly fell. Her legs were not what they had been and sudden emotion now made her even more clumsy. Both Rykermann and Vaemar reached out to help her.
"What is it, Lion-cub?"
"Protectors with hyperdrive!"
Rykermann thought. Leonie saw his face grow pale in turn. Vaemar made a questioning sound.
"The kzinti didn't want to destroy the human worlds," Leonie said. "They wanted them intact for themselves, and they wanted to keep the human race like the Jotok. However merciless they are in battle kzinti have a kind of conservationist sense towards other species—according to traditional kzinti's cosmology, other intelligent species have a place in the great hierarchy ordained by the Fanged God. It just happens to be a very long way below their own. Isn't that right, Vaemar?"
"The Fanged God gave us other species to serve us and for us to prey upon, not to exterminate except when we had no other choice," said Vaemar. "At least that is the traditional teaching. Remember the kzinti offered the humans of Ka'ashi—excuse me, I mean of Wunderland—a cease-fire as soon as the Conquest Landing was complete."
Rykermann took up the thought. "But the Protectors would have only one aim: Destroy all possible competitors. First to exterminate the human species, and if necessary destroy the human worlds and all other life on them—they'd use anything: relativity weapons, anti-matter weapons, the dirtiest possible thermo-nukes and ramscoops in atmospheres, killer hypersonics, geological disrupters. They'd make missiles of comets and asteroids, trigger solar flares. No possibility of treaty or negotiation. All other species, especially all other sapient species, regarded as vermin-to-be-exterminated by definition. Not only would they be more totally focused on destruction than would kzinti, they are far more intelligent than nearly all individuals of either of our species, and far tougher . . .
"There's a theory, you know, that Venus's tectonic plates were somehow turned over a couple of million years ago. It makes no physical sense. We can't see how such a thing could have happened, except by
