However, when Harcourt, Brace and World brought out my own selection of favourites, The Nine Billion Names of God, it was mysteriously changed to "Encounter at Dawn".Three scientists, Altman, Bertrond, and Clindar, are crewing a spaceship on a survey of the Milky Way.

Life of this type is rare, so the three men make contact with one of planet's inhabitants, a hunter named Yaan.

Yaan does not understand his visitors' language or technology (which includes an advanced robot) and he regards them as gods of some kind.

However, the civilisation that the scientists come from is collapsing, for unclear reasons relating to "mistakes" and the death of stars.

The story ends with saying that "more than a thousand centuries ahead, Yaan's descendants would build the great city they were to call Babylon", revealing that Yaan's people are prehistoric humans and their planet, the setting of the story, is Earth.