Apes And A Waterfall

The Night Face.

"'We've both had encounters before now with animals on the verge of intelligence, not to mention fully developed nonhuman races.'" (VIII, p. 613)

Here is one further reminder that nonhuman intelligences still exist in this post-Imperial period of the Technic History even though they do not appear. 2001: A Space Odyssey coped with the problem of what aliens look like by just not showing them. These four stories could have been written from that perspective although now CGI makes the visuals of any kind of screen aliens possible.

Chapter VII informed us that parallel evolution had made anthropoid animals, apes, common on terrestroid planets. We had not known that till now.

Chapter VII also described:

foaming water;

"...a shifting pattern of light and shadow..." (p. 604);

dancing rainbows;

swirling currents;

riverbed stones seeming to ripple;

a waterfall ringing in the cool, damp air;

a high, wheeling bird of prey.

Familiar descriptive details in new combinations.