go to Athena and to
make blasters to kill Gerns after you get there."

Lake had a corral built early the following spring, with camouflaged
wings, to trap some of the woods goats when they came. It would be an
immense forward step toward conquering their new environment if they
could domesticate the goats and have goat herds near the caves all
through the year. Gathering enough grass to last a herd of goats through
the winter would be a problem--but first, before they worried about
that, they would have to see if the goats could survive the summer and
winter extremes of heat and cold.

They trapped ten goats that spring. They built them brush
sunshades--before summer was over the winds would have stripped the
trees of most of their dry, brown leaves--and a stream of water was
diverted through the corral.

It was all work in vain. The goats died from the heat in early summer,
together with the young that had been born.

When fall came they trapped six more goats. They built them shelters
that would be as warm as possible and carried them a large supply of the
tall grass from along the creek banks; enough to last them through the
winter. But the cold was too much for the goats and the second blizzard
killed them all.

The next spring and fall, and with much more difficulty, they tried the
experiment with pairs of unicorns. The results were the same.

Which meant they would remain a race of hunters. Ragnarok would not
permit them to be herdsmen.

* * * * *

The years went by, each much like the one before it but for the rapid
aging of the Old Ones, as Lake and the others called themselves, and the
growing up of the Young Ones. No woman among the Old Ones could any
longer have children, but six more normal, healthy children had been
born. Like the first two, they were not affected by the gravity as
Earth-born babies had been.

Among the Young Ones, Lake saw, was a distinguishable difference. Those
who had been very young the day the Gerns left them to die had adapted
better than those who had been a few years older.

The environment of Ragnarok had struck at the very young with merciless
savagery. It had subjected them to a test of survival that was without
precedent on Earth. It had killed them by the hundreds but among them
had been those whose young flesh and blood and organs had resisted death
by adapting to the greatest extent possible.

The day of the Old Ones was almost d