Orion in the Dying Time by Ben Bova

name would be Prometheus, for I would show the earliest freezing, starving band of humans how to make fire, how to survive even in the desolation of mile-thick glaciers that covered half the world.
    Who am I now, in this time and place? I looked up at the stars scattered across the velvety-dark sky and once again saw that baleful dark red eye staring down at me, brighter than the moon, bright enough to cast my shadow across the ground. A star that had never been in any sky I had seen before. A star that somehow seemed linked with Set and his dragons and his enslavement of these Neolithic people.
    For a moment I was tempted to try once more to make contact with the Creators. But the fear of alerting Set again made me hesitate. I stood on the shore of the broad lake, listening to the night breeze making the trees sigh, and wished with all my might that the Creators would attempt to contact us.
    But nothing happened. The owl hooted again; it sounded like bitter laughter.
    I stayed by the lake side rather than returning to the makeshift camp where the men sprawled asleep. Kraal insisted that we had to fight, and I felt certain he did not mean any bloodless ritual. With the dawn we would battle each other with wooden spears and flint knives.
    Unless I could think of something better.
    I spent the long hours of the sinister menacing night thinking. A cold gray fog rose from the lake, slowly wrapping the trees in its embrace until I could not make out their tops nor see the stars. The moon made the fog glow all silver and the world became a chill dank featureless bowl of cold gray moonlight, broken only by an occasional owl's hoot or the distant eerie howl of a wolf. Kraal's dogs bayed back at the wolves, proclaiming their own territory.
    The fog was lifting and the sky beginning to turn a soft delicate pink when I sensed a man walking slowly through the mist-shrouded trees toward me at the water's edge. It was Kraal. He came up beside me without the slightest bit of fear or hesitation and looked out across the lake. The fog was thinning, dissolving like the fears of darkness dispelled by the growing light of day.
    He pointed toward the growing brightness on the horizon where the Sun would soon come up. "The Light-Stealer comes closer."
    I followed his outstretched arm and saw the dull reddish star glowing sullenly in the brightening sky.
    "And the Punisher is almost too faint to see," Kraal added.
    "The Punisher?"
    "Can't you see it? Just beside the Light-Stealer, very faint . . ."
    For the first time I realized that there was a second point of light close to the red star that Kraal called the Light-Stealer. A dim pinpoint barely on the edge of visibility.
    "What do those names mean?" I asked.
    He gave me a surprised look. "You don't know about the Light-Stealer and his Punisher?"
    "I come from far away," I said. "Much farther than Noch and his band."
    Kraal's expression turned thoughtful. He explained the legend of the Light-Stealer. The gods—which include the Sun-god, mightiest of them all—had no care for human beings. They saw humans struggling to exist, weaker than the wolves and bears, cold and hungry always, and turned their backs to us. The Light-Stealer, a lesser god, took pity on humankind and decided to give us the gift of fire.
    My breath caught in my throat. The Prometheus legend. It was I who gave the earliest humans the gift of fire, deep in the eternal cold and snow of the Ice Age. Kraal told the story strangely, but his tale caught the cruel indifference of the so-called gods almost perfectly.
    The Light-Stealer knew that the only way to bring fire to the human race was to steal it from the Sun. So every year the dull red star robs the Sun of some of its light. Instead of remaining in the night sky, as all the other stars do, it gradually encroaches on the daytime domain of the Sun, getting closer and closer each day. Finally it reaches the Sun and steals some of its fire. Then it runs away to return to the