Sometime during the night he awoke. His body was a mass of bruises and cuts. It gave him excruciating agony to force his head from the floor, but he did so, and cast a slow glance about him. Then he saw what he wanted.
Painfully he inched himself to Lo's side and aroused her, placing his hand quickly over her mouth to stifle the outcry. "It's me," he whispered. "Rog. Listen to me, Lo. I want you to go away with me!"
Instantly the girl was wide awake. "Go away!" she echoed.
He nodded. "Not for good. Just for a few moons. Then we will come back, and I will become the Old Man!"
Now Lo was trembling with excitement. Before she could question him, he bent nearer and whispered, "Pay attention to what I say, but don't ask questions. We are going back into the forest, to a great, shining stone I found. And we must go tomorrow, as soon as the tribe is not noticing us."
Then, hurriedly, he told her of the sphere. She was puzzled, almost inclined to doubt him, but the energy and sincerity of his manner told her he was not lying. A groan from one of the sleepers sent him scuttling back to his place, to lie there sleepless until the sun came up and shot long, golden lances into the cave.
He was so tense in the morning that he could scarcely force himself to pretend to work. Lo stayed near him. Fear and hope battled within him. Failure now would mean that Johann Adam would wait in vain, out in the forest, for him to come back. He would know Rog could not help him, at last, and then ... what?
He would become older rapidly, for he had many years on his shoulders already. Time would almost surely cut him down before he could find anyone in any of the tribes intelligent enough to know he was not a devil. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead at the thought of so much knowledge being wasted. Though he could not know it, his concern for the secrets of the museum marked him as the first scientist in many thousands of years.
When the sun had climbed high over the tops of the leafy trees Rog saw his chance. The others had scattered, paying him little attention. In a flash he had darted to Lo's side and hissed, "Now! We must run fast!"