“Yes it does! And ancient man actually saw the canopy.”

“Ridiculous! What ancient man saw were the four great glacials of the Pleistocene: Gunz, Mindel, Riss and Wurm.”

“The four frost giants,” Gus agreed. “But it was the canopy that caused those glaciers. Say—didn’t they have American names, too?”

“There were equivalent glacials in North America. The Nebraskan, Kansan, Illinoisan and Wisconsin. They were named after the states in which the first finds were made—the moraines and scratches and other typical signs. The European ones were named after the various German valleys where they were identified. The two sets correlate pretty well.”

“Right! So there was one overall cause, worldwide. The canopy.”

“Gus, if man had seen anything like that, he would have recorded it somehow, if only in legends.”

“He did. Ancient pottery shows the canopy, and Stonehenge was built to—”

She laughed. “I don’t know what sort of stuff you read, but that’s crackpot theory! Are you sure it wasn’t a fantasy novel?”

“Nonfiction,” he said seriously. “It was the Annular Theory. I have a book on it packed away, Heavens and Earth of Prehistoric Man. Things like that interest me. I’ll show you, when we have a chance to unload.”

“So that’s why you think this rain will flood the world!” she said derisively. “You read someone’s wild conjecture—”

But Gus was not nettled. Whatever his failings, he had a steady temper. “Do you know otherwise?”

That shut her up. She did not know otherwise. In fact this theory of his bore an uncanny resemblance to the actual situation. It was as if fate had directed her to the very person who could understand and help—a person she would never ordinarily have met. She knew the rain would continue, horrendously, even though she was not free to admit that. Everything she had learned in space was classified, rightly or wrongly. Her flight from the stupidity and confusion that had precipitated this crisis did not release her from the oath of secrecy she had unwillingly taken.