"Yes, though it makes the joints still more unbelievable."
"What?"
"The foot itself. Unless some rather remarkable distortion has occurred, it had both longitudinal and transverse arches, like yours and mine—which suggests strongly that this thing's ancestors had been walking erect on two legs for some hundreds of thousands of generations." Krendall raised his eyebrows at this, and silently examined the bony structure before them for several minutes.
"I—hadn't—spotted—that," he said slowly. He looked in silence for several more seconds. Then the two men, moved by a single thought, went to the other end of the exposed leg and began to clear the hip joint and pelvic region. They worked almost in silence, understanding each other perfectly, like an experienced surgical team; and gradually the equivalent of a pelvic girdle and lower end of a spinal column were cleared sufficiently to show their general nature.
It was at this point that the helicopter returned; but neither man noticed the fact until McLaughlin had called several times from the open ladder hatch. They climbed silently and thoughtfully up to the flyer; but Mitsuitei's first question started the talk flowing.
It did not end for a long, long time.
Krendall, with difficulty, held interruptions of his more volatile companion.
"There can be only the slightest doubt that this thing we're uncovering walked erect on two legs," he reported. "The feet; the way the pelvis is modified to support internal organs; the fusing of the lowest vertebrae with the pelvic girdle to form a weight carrying foundation—they all point the same way. The only thing hard to understand is the knee and ankle joints. If we had them, it would be virtually impossible for us to hold our legs rigid. Perhaps some really remarkable musculature—"
"Or a cartilage structure which has not been preserved," cut in Sulewayo.