The Ark had drifted closer to the shore. He circled it and counted the lifeless bodies lying in red stains on the gopher wood of the deck. Eight.
Then he noticed the change. The backs of his hands were hairier. His shoes were binding him. When he kicked them off his agile toes curled comfortably around the control pedals. He had a glimpse of a hairy, flat-nosed face reflected in the instrument panel. It laughed and the sound came out a simian yap.
But for all that he was still a sentient being. His control of the spacecraft was as expert as before.
It hadn't worked.
Do you hear, Dr. Gar? he thought. It's a flop. I goofed the mission. We're all dead, no matter what.
I give you a new commandment, man who would be God: Thou shalt not tamper with time.
He had changed the future and in the future he himself had been changed, but not enough. Somewhere below in the hold of the Ark were his ancestors who had evolved along a new path in the new future. The evolution had been slower, perhaps, but it had been as sure, external appearances notwithstanding. Somewhere in the far new future, he was sure, there was a simian Dr. Gar looking down in solitude on the remains of Earth.
The Ark had touched the land. The animals—his fellow creatures—were beginning to go forth, two by two, onto the shore of Ararat.
His foescope set up a clamor. There in the sky was a new thing, a spacecraft like his, yet unlike it. It looked deadlier, more purposeful. Ignoring him, it was diving out of the unknowable future to destroy its own past.
He watched in professional admiration as his fellow pilot screamed unerringly for the Ark in sacrificial completion of the mission he himself had failed to accomplish. Death to the animals, too—from an animal pilot.