There were many occasions when Julian’s time-vault came under scrutiny during the periodic rebuildings of the city. Each time when it seemed likely that the vault would be opened (and the waxing and waning technology did not always make this possible) Neverdie would intercede and persuade the authorities to leave it untouched. Under his auspices it was eventually removed to a site on a hill overlooking the city to the north.
But at last the age of Homo sapiens itself passed.
For a long time Neverdie had seen the end coming, but he had offered no hint of it to his long-standing hosts. Human scientists had never quite understood the laws of evolution. They had not realised that just as an individual animal had a natural life-span, so an entire species had a natural life-span which was predetermined by its hereditary genes. Nature, having made one dominant species, liked to wash it down the drain and try something different with another. For this reason evolutionary changes sometimes proceeded with suddenness. Homo sapiens had emerged from primate stock over a span of tens of thousands, rather than of millions, of years, and the death of the species was coming just as suddenly as had the birth. With the running down of the genetic clock births became fewer, society collapsed and the vitality of the human race entirely vanished.
Even while the last remaining men died nature was already preparing their successor: Lupus sapiens, the intelligent wolf.
In a crude hut some miles from the ruins Neverdie finished his long period of meditation. He had reached a conclusion: his host species was gone, and the arising of the new dominant species would be a turbulent period in which it would be hard to survive; therefore, the time had come to be moving on.
As he roused himself his artificial voice-diaphragm whispered rustily. It was nearly four thousand years since its last replacement and the thing was rotting. He would discard it soon, when he could find the time.
He lifted the door-latch. The wooden door creaked open, letting in a cold draught of air. He crept out on to the wilderness of the moor and set out for the ruins, keeping a wary watch for any predatory wolves. He lived in a state of armed truce with them, but he knew that they were liable at any time to renew their attacks on him.
He reached the ruins without mishap. They were little changed from when he had last visited them, except that the wolves had begun to tear down the brickwork to fortify their camps. They had not yet learned to work metal, however, and the vault containing his starship was intact, though it did bear the marks of their rude tools. It looked incongruously neat amid this fallen tangle of stone, a perfect dome washed clean by the rain. The lock grated reluctantly as he made his entrance, and in the dim light within Neverdie set to work to prepare the vessel for flight.
The starship had benefited from his servicing it every few centuries and was still in fairly good condition despite the difficulty of replacing some of its components (there were some materials that could not be obtained in the solar system at all). Within three days he deemed the vessel fit for interstellar flight, or as fit as it was ever likely to be. Now all that remained was to prepare a route from his maps: the work of hours. But first, another small matter was nudging at Neverdie’s mind. Long ago he had trapped an old enemy, Julian Ferrg, in his self-created prison. His conscience would not permit him to condemn that enemy to eternal living death. The world he would awaken to now would not be a pleasant one and it might kill him quickly, but Ferrg would have to take his chance on that.
Neverdie readied a small aircraft he also had stored in the vault and charged up its accumulator from the starship’s power source. Then he opened the dome’s launching hatch. Night had fallen, and starlight filtered through. With a sparkle from its rear the aircraft soared aloft and headed north, passing over the wolves’ campfires. Neverdie imagined the scenes that would be taking place below, and reaffirmed his opinion that Earth was no longer an abode for him.
On reaching Julian’s tomb Neverdie spent some time clearing away earth and vegetation, then he cut an opening as he had done long ago. Inside Julian still lay as he had on that other occasion, untouched by the passage of time. As he looked down on the parchment-white face Neverdie’s mandibles spread in the equivalent of a sad smile. He felt no resentment against the man. Julian was a courageous mite who had managed to preserve his tiny life in an attempt to challenge the long-living Aldebaranian, but the balance of his disadvantage lay too heavily against him. As for his viciousness and his greed, Neverdie hardly thought about that.
Finding the reviving mechanism serviceable, Neverdie set the timer for a few hours hence and then flew back to his starship. The charting of a course took slightly longer than he had expected, and it was early morning by the time he aroused the star-drive from its long sleep. He took one last, nostalgic look at the planet that had harboured him for what was, to him, a brief spell, and then took off. As its propulsion unit took hold on the fabric of space the deteriorated structure groaned slightly in the ether eddies. Neverdie scanned his instruments, watching anxiously for any sign of malfunction.
Disaster struck when he was only a few hundred feet in the air. The ship was too old, despite all the work he had put into her. An ominous snap came from aft. Noxious vapours filled the cabin. The ship began to fall and Neverdie struggled desperately with the controls.
As luck would have it, Julian was already awake by the time Neverdie attempted to leave the planet.
The suspended animation system was so effective that in a remarkably short time he had made a full recovery. With the coming of consciousness he found that the lid of the cylinder where he had slept had opened automatically, and he was already breathing air.
His limbs were stiff at first, but he eased himself from the cylinder, his mind already racing ahead to the tasks to come. Then a quick inspection acquainted him with the unexpected state of the chamber: the hole cut neatly in the wall, the decay of some of his equipment that was not carbon-bonded into diamond-hardness, the automatic calendar, calibrated up to a thousand years, that had stopped. Lastly, what he saw through the hole in the walclass="underline" a view of trees and fresh grass sweeping downhill. The trees, and the nearby flowers, were of a type unfamiliar to him.
A howl of torment burst from Julian’s lips. It was as easy to read as an open book: the alien had outwitted him—disconnected the reviver and left him to sleep for countless ages. By now he would already have left Earth, perhaps centuries ago.
The desolation and disappointment that overtook Julian Ferrg with that realisation were almost enough to destroy him. Only one thing saved him from permanent emotional damage. He stepped to the opening, finding that the vault was actually buried in the hillside, and looked out, sniffing the air and smelling unfamiliar scents. He glanced upwards and saw something descending through the air leaving a trail of smoke. As it headed for a crash-landing he recognised Neverdie’s starship and everything changed for him in an instant. He paused only to mark the landing place of the ship, then snatched up weapons and instruments from their sealed caskets and set off in wild pursuit.
The crashed starship was about three miles from the vault. Julian arrived there to find that Neverdie had crawled out and lost consciousness. He lay on a bank of green-and-purple flowers.
Julian was adapting quickly to his situation. To his senses the ages he had lain in the time-vault took on the subjective value of a few minutes only, and he required no lengthy reorientation. He took out the anaesthetic spray in case Neverdie should awaken and prove troublesome; but its contents had either denatured or leaked away and no spray issued. Tossing it to one side, he considered the problem of transporting Neverdie to his time-vault and hit on the idea of making a sledge.