"I might make one
guess--the Reds have been making an all-out effort for the past hundred
years to open up Siberia. In some sections of that huge country there
have been great climatic changes almost overnight in the far past.
Mammoths have been discovered frozen in the ice with half-digested
tropical plants in their stomach. It's as if the beasts were given some
deep-freeze treatment instantaneously. If in their excavations the Reds
came across the remains of a spaceship, remains well enough preserved
for them to realize what they had discovered, they might start questing
back in time to find a better one intact at an earlier date. That theory
fits everything we know now."
"But why would the aliens attack the Reds now?"
"No ship's officers ever thought gently of pirates." Ashe's eyes closed.
There were questions, a flood of them, that Ross wanted to ask. He
smoothed the fabric on his arm, that stuff which clung so tightly to his
skin yet kept him warm without any need for more covering.
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