Yet another "spacemen and caveman" story

Question

When I was a kid I had access to a handful of "golden age" SF mags, out of which a couple of stories stick in my mind.

One of them started with a caveman returning from foraging with his companions, and demonstrating altruism by giving a branch covered with berries to the girl unable to fend for herself due to a broken back.

He later meets two (?) spacesuited individuals, who communicate with him using "tubes": there was an illustration which showed these as hoses attached to the suits rather than as handheld instruments or what we British would call "valves" **

Towards the end of the story he fights the pack leader, and then leaves carrying the girl with the broken back: the implication being that they were the ultimate ancestors of the Human Race.

Was this one of the published variants of Clarke's "Encounter at Dawn", something well-known by some other author, or simply a tale which has vanished into the mists over the seventy years or so since it was written?

** I think it's fair to contrast the author's casual mention of "tubes" in this story with the far more cautious approach taken by Adams in "Watership Down".

Possible cross-reference to "Pulp era" story: "Dachwu, remember?" which identifies one of the magazines as Super Science Stories, April 1949... unfortunately the USA edition at archive.org doesn't also contain this story although there is a possibility that the British one did if that's what I saw.

Answer 1

After much scrabbling around in my pile of old scifi stuff I have found your story. It is This Star Shall be Free by Murray Leinster. It was published in the November 1949 issue of Super Science Stories.

This is the image you remember of the aliens in spacesuits with tubes:

The protagonist is Tork. You have mis-remembered the story slightly. The girl is called Berry, and at the beginning of the story Tork gives her some fish not a branch with fruit on.

In an hour it appeared to have been forgotten. Tork cooked his fish. When his belly was quite full, a young girl named Berry stopped cautiously some yards away from him. She was at once shy and bold.

"You have much fish," she said, with a toss of her head.

"Too much," said Tork complacently. "I need a woman to help eat it."

He looked at her. She was most likely One-Ear's daughter, but she was slim and curved and desirable where he was bloated and gross and bad-tempered.

She said, "One-Ear smelled your fish. He sent me to get some. Shall I tell him he is a woman if he eats it?"

Her eyes were intent; not quite mocking. Tork scowled. To let her give such a message would be to challenge One-Ear to mortal combat, and One-Ear was twenty years older and sixty pounds heavier than Tork. He tossed the girl a fish, all cooked and greasy as it was.

"I give you the fish," said Tork grandly. "Eat it or give it to One-Ear. I don't care!"

Berry is a daughter of the chief One-Ear, but Tork doesn't fight One-Ear. He marries Berry and takes over without a struggle as One-Ear gets old. Lastly Berry doesn't have a broken back. She and Tork live long and happy lives and have many children.

The aliens are from Antares. They are water dwellers and their suits are full of water. The Antareans intend to colonise Earth, but Tork discovers that as long as his tribe are continually thinking of the Antareans they are unable to leave due to the mental bond they have formed with the Earthmen. He paints pictures of them on the cave walls (the first cave art!) to continually remind his people of the Antareans and in this way holds the Antareans hostage. Eventually a deal is made that the Antareans will not colonise Earth and in return Tork will destroy all the pictures.

Answer 2

Maybe you're mixing up two stories from that same pile of Golden Age pulps? Murray Leinster's "This Star Shall Be Free" was in the November 1949 issue of Super Science Stories. The very next issue, Super Science Stories, January 1950 (available at the Luminist Archive), had "The Long Dawn", a novelette by Noel Loomis. There are no space aliens in the Loomis story, but there is a cavegirl with a broken back; the hero is trying to get medical help by taking her into the future (with her infant child and his pet pterodactyl and his pet tyrannosaur) via suspended animation in an underground time-vault:

Henderson left, and Chark, tired from the strain of projecting his mind so far, let him go and sat back to wait. He hoped it wouldn't take too long, for it was worrying him to think about the female back in the time-vault. Her back must be very painful by now. Twice had they been awakened in the last hundred million years, and each time Chark had tried desperately to find medical help, but each time he had failed. On both occasions she had been very patient and had not even whimpered, but Chark had seen the suffering in her eyes and it had been hard for him to take. This time he was determined to get help.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to try to save her, after all. Old Grak had said, when she fell out of the big moa-tree and lay writhing in the tall grass, "Let her alone. She'll die before sundown."