Adam Wolfe looked back at the mountain range, a two-day hike from where he stood now. Still no sign of modern man.
Maybe 100,000 years was too far back in time. The Foundation only been given one shot at it. The Earth was not likely to pass that close to a wormhole again for several millennia. No, actually make that more than a hundred millennia in the future from where (more accurately when) Adam stood now.
Some in the Foundation wanted to go back to Big One, to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out by a giant asteroid. But the suits at NASA were too cheap to spring for a million-year ticket and a big expedition.
That was OK. Adam was pretty sure that he didn't want a front row seat for the Big One.
They finally agreed to a smaller expedition (just Adam and a measly 100,000 years back in time). As it was, they had strapped Adam into a space capsule that had to be smaller than the one the Rooskies used to launch that poor mutt Laika into space back in 1957, a full two years before the Clovers sang the original "Love Potion Number 9" (although they had been that way since 1956).
The reentry had been a little warm, as the most of the recycled Space Shuttle tiles blew off his capsule, heating its surface to 900 degrees Fahrenheit (although the 755 degrees Kelvin temperature announced by the ship's computer sounded so much more refreshing). Whatever it was, it had been enough to turn the capsule's hull into a festive glowing red.
Also, the parachute had opened a little late for Adam's taste, especially when the capsule hit the ground at 100 klicks an hour. Goddamn air bag didn't even deploy, the cheap Chinese shit.
At any rate, here he was safe on the ground in Europe in 998,075 B.C. (or so his I-Phone 2210 told him), and there was still no sign of modern humans. It looked like the gap in the fossil record was no fluke. But how could modern man seemingly arise out of nothing in France and then move eastward to slaughter all the other hominids in sight?
Adam flipped open his I-Phone and dictated his findings thus far. The plan was to bury the phone and the boys from the Foundation would find it 100,000 years from now with the GPS tracker. That's why the thing was powered by Energizer batteries.
You see, the ticket that they bought for Adam was a one-way one. There would be no return trip.
Adam looked at the smoke-free woods. He sure as hell hoped that there were some modern humans here. As least three or four of the female variety, glad in bear-skin bikinis. Adam's war club began to rise at the thought.
It was then that he stepped into the pit, was caught up in a rope net and lifted ten feet in the air.
They emerged from the bushes then, ululating and thrusting their spears in the air. The ones Jean Auel had called the Others. The Neanderthals.