“Now you’re being a little too spacious, aren’t you, Ross?” Chris said, rather crossly. “Fun’s fun, but without being sadistic.”

“Look who’s talking,” Bay Husack observed from the back seat.

“What goes on here!” Distelhorst demanded, querulously.

“Sorry, sir. What was your last question? I missed it,” Ross said.

“They live like Eskimos? I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything. I mean, the way you look, and all, just like any young fella. But up there, your folks, I mean, they live like Eskimos? Igloos and so on?”

Ross appeared to consider this a moment, the half-smile still lingering on the mischievous face. “I’m happy to answer any questions I can. About the blubber. Let’s go back to the blubber just for a moment, shall we?”

Ott Decker made a little reproachful sound between tongue and teeth. Ross went on, equably. “Blubber isn’t bad, you know. Like any fat meat or fish. Or the olive oil you use in your salad dressing. You eat salads, Mr. Distelhorst?”

“Ross!” Chris snapped.

“Igloos,” he continued, with a kind of patient charm, “are out. Of course an Eskimo can build himself—I hope he still can—a temporary snow-block igloo if he’s out hunting and gets stuck. He wouldn’t want to freeze to death. But my family—what’s left of it—up in Oogruk—and even some relatives who live up in Point Barrow where it’s really rugged—you should go up there on your jaunt, sir—my folks live in a frame house in Oogruk, not bad. They have a radio and a phonograph and an outboard motor and a sewing machine and they eat steaks when they can afford them and the girls wear silk stockings and they read Life and the movie magazines, and they go to the movies.”

“Movies!” echoed Distelhorst.

“Of course in the winter we Alaskans eat a lot of meat and fish and fat, but then, so do people in Kansas and New York and Minnesota. Now we Eskimos have got into the habit of white man’s food—starch and sugar and so on. Bad for the teeth and not much cold resistance in it. Grandma clings to the old ways, good and bad; but the girls go for permanents and those ballet petticoats, or those tight pants and flats; and the boys are all in that uniform—blue jeans and black leather jacket. Crazy in the Arctic. And of course everybody—kids and grownups and everybody—they fly whenever they can afford it.”

“No kidding!”

“No kidding,” Ross echoed, cheerfully. “We’ll soon be extinct. Unless, of course, a hydrogen-bomb war comes along.”

“How’s that again?”

“Eskimos don’t need civilization. Your kind, I mean. We’ve had a kind of built-in civilization for hundreds and hundreds of years. We’d just go back—the few, if any, that were left, that is—would go back to homemade skin boats and stone weapons and hunting implements, and fur-and-skin clothing—the stuff we’ve used for a couple of thousand years. And maybe in another two thousand years we’d still be here, cosy as anything, waiting for a new white race to come along and discover us.”