None of them, not even the thoughtful Lo, ever stopped to wonder how far back their ancestors had lived in this spot. Nor did they care. But Rog found himself wondering if life had always been like this, or if it had once been superior or inferior to their mode of life. Sometimes he would grow curious enough to wander far down the river, or off into the hills, alone.
It was on one of those excursions, prompted by an increasing dissatisfaction with the life of the tribe, that Rog wandered back four or five ranges from the cave dwellings. He had just sat down to eat some of the dried meat he had brought along when his eye was caught by a glint of flashing metal off through the dense woods.
Startled, he leaped up and made his way nearer. Within ten minutes he was standing aghast, staring at a great, gleaming globe of silver, half buried in the soft, moldy ground. He was terrified, for an instant, and broke into panic-stricken flight before this thing that none of the aborigines had ever seen. Then Rog's overpowering curiosity brought him creeping back.
It was fifty times as tall as he was, just the half of it he could see. It sparkled in the sunlight like white fire. Then, down near the ground, Rog saw a round cut in the smooth surface. Something told him this was the way inside the ball, though there was no reason why he should not have believed it was anything but solid. But there was an inner urge that made him approach gingerly and take hold of the long cross-bar that was set into the door.
Eagerly he pulled at it. Nothing happened. He pushed, twisted, shoved, and still the thing would not budge. Then a gleam of comprehension flickered in his eyes. He grasped both ends of the bar and turned it the way a plumber turns a pipe-cutter. It moved!
The round entrance swivelled about on threads that were glass-smooth, until suddenly it swung aside on a hinge. Rog gasped and poked his head inside. He was so amazed that for a couple of minutes he could only stand in the portal, gaping.
The ball was divided into floors, apparently, for there was a spiral staircase in the middle that went up through the high ceiling, and a continuation of the stairway going down into the lower half of it. From some small globes hanging from the ceiling a soft radiation was thrown into the room. There were gleaming tables and cabinets and shelves of mystifying apparatus that Rog's eyes had never seen.
At last he ventured inside. He went from one glass-covered table to the next, frowning at the things he saw. He could make nothing of them.
There were twenty tables, and each bore a maze of strange symbols on its top. He was at a loss to divine what they meant, until he discovered that at the bottom of each chart there was a picture of a globe, with a tiny red arrow pointing to a section of it. Then he knew. The tables were supposed to tell him what was to be found on each floor.