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very quietly.
    “Probably a sithar, Bones.” Kirk supplied, helpfully. “Very large predator. Looks like a cross between a musk ox and a lion. You remember, there was one painted on the wall. Scientists estimated them to be about the size of an Earth buffalo.”
    “Carnivorous?” McCoy asked, still in that quiet tone. Spock raised an eyebrow and glanced at Kirk, whose smile broadened.
    “Sure.” Kirk replied. “Their favorite meal is Chief Surgeons who don’t have the sense to listen to their Commanding Officers.”
    McCoy glared at him, then grinned sheepishly. “Guess I did kind of crash the party. But, dammit, you may need me!” He paused, then said, “Well, what’ll we do for the rest of the night? Sit around and listen to that thing howl for its supper? Or—” he dug in his suit’s pockets, “we could have a friendly little game. I brought my cards ...”
    Kirk shoved him with his boot. “I’d rather be eaten by a sithar than lose my shirt to you again. I’m turning in.”
    [42] The Doctor turned to the Vulcan. “What about it, Spock? Deuces wild?”
    His mouth quirked a bit at the comers, as the First Officer shook his head. “I, too, am fatigued, Doctor. Perhaps the sithar will join you for a game—if you ask it, politely.”
    McCoy lay in the dark, listening to the wind over Kirk’s snores. It was a long time before he slept.

Chapter V
    Kirk awakened in the morning to find Spock gone. He hastily pulled on his therm-suit and left the Doctor sleeping peacefully. As he opened the flap of the tent, he saw his First Officer standing a few meters away, and joined him as he stood surveying the landscape.
    The storm had gone, and the air was cold and clear. Beta Niobe was rising, swollen and blood-colored, in a pale lavender sky that shaded to deep purple the undersides of the remaining storm clouds. They’d camped in a sheltered hollow at the base of a jagged cliff that rose on the right until it blocked the sky. Before them was a large, U-shaped valley, flanked by the cliffs. Snow lay in patches on top of short, mossy ground cover, pale aqua in color. The valley was dotted with many small, narrow lakes, the wind riffling their sapphire water. Far in the distance, at the end of his vision, Kirk could make out a herd of animals. He was aware that McCoy had joined him, and turned around at the sound of the Doctor’s startled gasp.
    Behind and to their left, a frozen tidal wave loomed. From where Kirk stood it might have been a quarter of a kilometer away, a wall of turquoise ice studded with boulders. The glacier was at least three hundred meters high, and Kirk craned his neck trying to see where it ended.
    “Damn,” McCoy commented, inadequately. “You ever see one of these things before, Jim?”
    “I’ve skied on them, in Colorado, but I never saw [44] one this big in the Rockies. I wonder how big it is, how far it goes?”
    Spock looked up from his tricorder. “The glacier is only a part of a larger ice sheet that extends northward as far as my tricorder range.”
    “I guess the wind blows down off the ice sheet-how cold is it?” Kirk slipped his hand out of his glove, tested the air.
    “The present temperature is—10° Celsius, but the wind chill makes it feel colder than that. The temperature during the middle of the day will probably rise to above freezing,” Spock replied.
    “Actually, it’s not as cold as I thought an ice age would be,” McCoy commented. “Nothing like the last time we were here.”
    “We are fortunate that we’ve arrived during the late spring, instead of winter this time, Doctor,” Spock said.
    “This is spring?” McCoy was taken aback.
    “I think Dante wrote about this place,” mused Kirk. “Just knowing that damned sun is going to blow gives me the shivers. See the typical pattern of the corona? Looks like it could go any minute.”
    “We know that Beta Niobe will not nova for 5,000 years, Captain. It is illogical to waste time speculating on