“Eighteen sixty-seven,” Bay Husack said in a droning schoolmaster’s voice.

Chris turned to look at the three in the back seat. Dina Drake registered sheer boredom. Wilbur Distelhorst’s brow was contorted with the labor of ethnological research. As Bay Husack’s gaze met Chris’s he closed one eye in the timeless gesture of one who privately shares a joke with another.

“That’s right—’67,” the questioner agreed. A persistent man, as one must be whose power is dearly gained, he was not one to let a fact escape him. “How long did you say you Eskimos been here? Way before ’67, that’s for sure.”

His head turned slightly toward his interrogator, a gleam shot from Ross’s eyes. Silent Eskimo laughter. But the profile view seemed serious; his tone was soft, courteous. “We were here before the Russians, yes. The Russians first took possession in 1729, I think. That’s the date given in the history books, at least. We Eskimos were here in 1000 B.C.—or earlier.”

“Yen? That’s interesting—heh, wait a minute! What d’you mean—B.C.!”

“Before Christ,” Ross replied, politely.

“Who you kidding? You giving me the old tenderfoot routine? What’s that you call ’em—cheechakos or something?”

“No, sir. We were North Americans before it was known as North America. Perhaps we crossed over when the Diomedes weren’t islands at all, but a peninsula. Nobody knows. Of course there are artifacts and traces and so on. We’ve been here—well, anyway twenty-five hundred years. That we know of, I mean.”

Wilbur K. Distelhorst looked sharply at the smart uniform, the lively intelligent face, the Seattle haircut, the Air Force ring on the gloveless brown hand stretched along the back of the seat behind Chris.

“Well, say, gosh!” He began to scribble again in the notebook. “This is going to make quite a report. You ever live up there, young man? I mean you ever live up there in the blubber country—you might say, the North Pole region?”

The fingers along the seat back beat a little tattoo for just a moment. The white fur hood and the dark head turned, faced each other, turned away; the hand lay quietly along the back of the seat. “Uh—not the North Pole, exactly. Of course the North Pole has become a kind of junket lately. But it’s a bit rugged for everyday living—even for Eskimos.”

Bay Husack interrupted. “By the way, Chris, are you people using Tommy guns on mosquitoes up here now?”

“Only when they ask for it,” Chris said, sweetly, over her shoulder.

“Pardon me,” Distelhorst went on, a trace of irritation in his voice. “I’d like to finish this interrogation, clear up a little research and follow through, if you’ll just bear with me a minute longer. This is important. I’d like to pinpoint this. This is what I’m here for, all this long way from Washington.”

“We certainly appreciate it,” Ott Decker at the wheel, staring firmly ahead, his voice hearty, his tone nervous.

Ross Guildenstern went on, smoothly. “I used to live up in the northern section of Alaska, sir. Oogruk, the village is called. It’s on the Bering Strait. Some of my folks still live there—cousins, and my grandmother and a brother and his wife and children. Blubber country? That’s a new name for it, sir. Very amusing.”