Ragnarok spent the winter.

"I'll try again to the north when spring comes," Craig said. "Maybe that
mountain on the plateau will have something."

Winter came, and Elaine died in giving him a son. The loss of Elaine was
an unexpected blow; hurting more than he would ever have thought
possible.

But he had a son ... and it was his responsibility to do whatever he
could to insure the survival of his son and of the sons and daughters of
all the others.

His outlook altered and he began to think of the future, not in terms of
years to come but in terms of generations to come. Someday one of the
young ones would succeed him as leader but the young ones would have
only childhood memories of Earth. He was the last leader who had known
Earth and the civilization of Earth as a grown man. What he did while he
was leader would incline the destiny of a new race.

He would have to do whatever was possible for him to do and he would
have to begin at once. The years left to him could not be many.

He was not alone; others in the caves had the same thoughts he had
regarding the future even though none of them had any plan for
accomplishing what they spoke of. West, who had held degrees in
philosophy on Earth, said to Lake one night as they sat together by the
fire:

"Have you noticed the way the children listen when the talk turns to
what used to be on Earth, what might have been on Athena, and what would
be if only we could find a way to escape from Ragnarok?"

"I've noticed," he said.

"These stories already contain the goal for the future generations,"
West went on. "Someday, somehow, they will go to Athena, to kill the
Gerns there and free the Terran slaves and reclaim Athena as their own."

He had listened to them talk of the interstellar flight to Athena as
they sat by their fires and worked at making bows and arrows. It was
only a dream they held, yet without that dream there would be nothing
before them but the vision of generation after generation living and
dying on a world that could never give them more than existence.

The dream was needed. But it, alone, was not enough. How long, on Earth,
had it been from the Neolithic age to advanced civilization--how long
from the time men were ready to leave their caves until they were ready
to go to the stars?

Twelve thousand years.

There were men and women among the Rejects who had been specialists in
various fields. There were a few books that had survived the tr