“Sun ahead.” Travis, opening his eyes, heard Renfry’s voice, a little sharpened, through the ship-wide com. “One—two—four planets. We seem to be bound for the second.”
More waiting time. Then once more descent into atmosphere, the return of weight, the vibration singing through walls and floors about them. Then the set-down, this time with a slight grating bump, as if the landing had not been so well controlled as it had at the fueling port.
“This is different . . .” Renfry’s report trailed into silence, as if what he saw in the screen had shocked him into speechlessness.
They climbed to the control cabin and crowded below that window on the new world. It must be night—but a night which was alive with reddish light, as if some giant fire filled the sky with the reflection of its fury. And that light rippled even as flames would ripple in their leaping.
“Home?” This time Ross asked the question.
Renfry, entranced as he still watched that display of fiery light, made a usual cautious answer.
“I don’t know—I just don’t know.”
“We’ll try a look-see from the port.” Ashe took up his planet-side command.
“Might be a volcano,” Travis hazarded from his experience in the prehistoric world.
“No, I don’t think so. I’ve only seen one thing like that—”
“I know what you mean.” Ross was already on the ladder. “The Northern Lights!”
The checkerboard spread of the fueling port, different as its architecture had been, was yet not too far removed from their own experience. But this—Travis gazed at the wild display beyond the outer door—this was the most fantastic dream made real.
That flickering red played in tongues along the horizon, filling about a quarter of the sky, ascending in licks up into the heavens. It paled stars and battled the moon which hung there—a moon three times the size of the one which accompanied his home planet.
Rippling out from about the ship was a stretch of cracked, buckled field that had once been smoothly surfaced. There was a faint crackling in the air which did not come from any wind but from static electricity. And the lurid light with its weaving alternately illuminated and reduced to shadow the whole countryside.
“Air’s all right.” Renfry had cautiously slipped off his helmet. At his report the others freed their own heads. The air was dry, as arid as desert wind.
“Buildings of some sort—in that direction.” They turned heads to follow Ross’s gesture.
Whereas the towers of the fueling field, ruined as they were, had fingered straightly into the sky, these structures, or structure, hugged the earth, the tallest portion not topping the globe. And nowhere in the red light could Travis sight anything suggesting vegetation. The desolation of the fuel port had been apparent, but here the barrenness was menacing.
None of them was inclined to go exploring under that fiery sky, and nothing moved in turn toward the ship. If this was another break in their journey, intended for the purpose of servicing their transport, the mechanics had broken down. At last the humans withdrew into the ship and closed the port, waiting for day.
“Desert . . .” Travis said that half to himself but Ashe glanced at him inquiringly.
“You mean—out there?”
“There’s a feel in the air,” Travis explained. “You learn to recognize it when you’ve lived most of your life with it.”
“Is this the end of the trip?” Ross asked Renfry again.
“I don’t know.” They had climbed back to the control cabin. Now the technician was standing in front of the main control panel. He was frowning at it. Then he turned suddenly to Travis.
“You feel desert out there. Well, I feel machines—I’ve lived with them for most of my life. We’ve set down here, there’s no indication that we’re going to take off again. Nothing but a sense that I have—that we’re not finished yet.” He laughed, a little self-consciously. “All right, now tell me that I’m seeing ghosts and I’ll have to agree.”
“On the contrary, I agree with you so thoroughly that I’m not going too far from the ship.” Ashe smiled in return. “Do you suppose this is another fuel stop?”
“No robots out,” Ross objected.
“Those could have been immobilized or rusted away long ago,” Renfry replied. He appeared sorry now that he had raised that doubt.
They went at last to their bunks, but if any of them slept, it was in snatches. To Travis, lying on the soft mattress which fitted itself to the comfort of his body, there was no longer any security—the ambiguous security offered by the ship while in flight. Now outside the shell he could rest his hand against was an unknown territory more liable to offer danger than a welcome. Perhaps the display of fiery lights in the night, perhaps the dry air worked on him to produce the conviction that this was not a world of machines left to carry out tasks set them before his kind had evolved. No, there was life here and it waited—outside.
He must have dozed, for it was Ross’s hand on his shoulder which brought him awake. And he trailed after the other to the mess. He ate, still silent, but with every nerve in his gaunt body alert, convinced that danger lay outside.
They went armed, strapping on the belts supporting the aliens’ weapons. And they issued into a merciless sunlight, as threatening with its white brilliance as the flames of the night before.
Ashe shielded his eyes with his hand. “Try wearing the helmets,” he ordered. “They might just cut some of the glare.”
He was right. When they fastened down the bubbles, the material cut that daylight so that their eyes were unaffected.
Travis had been right, too, in his belief that they were in desert country. Sand—dunes of white sand, glittering with small sun-reflecting particles which must be blinding to unshielded eyes—crept over the long-deserted landing space. Here were no other grounded ships like the ones at the first galactic port, only lonely sweeps of sand, unbroken by the faintest hint of vegetation.
Sand—and buildings, low, earth-hugging buildings—perhaps a quarter of a mile away.
The four from the ship hesitated at the foot of the ladder. It was not only Renfry’s hunch that their voyage was not completed that kept them tied to the globe. The barrenness of the countryside certainly was no invitation to explore. And yet there was always a chance that some discovery might help to solve the abiding riddle of their return.
“We do it this way.” Ashe, the veteran explorer, took over with decisive authority. “You stay here, Renfry—up at the door. Any sign the ship is coming to life again and you fire—on maximum.”
A bolt of the force spewed from the narrow muzzle of the alien weapon would produce crackling blue fire which should be visible for miles. They were not sure of the range of the helmet coms, but they could be certain of the effectiveness of a force bolt as a warning.
“Can do!” Renfry was already swinging up the ladder, displaying no disappointment in not being one of the explorers.
Then, with Ashe in the center and the lead, the other two flanking him a little behind and to the right and left, the humans headed for the buildings. Travis mechanically studied the sand under foot. What he was searching for he could not have told, nor would that loose sand have held tracks—tracks! He glanced back. The faint depressions which marked his footsteps were already almost indistinguishable. There was certainly nothing to indicate that anyone—or anything—had passed over that portion of the forgotten base for days, months, years, generations.
But the sand was not everywhere. He stepped aside to avoid a broken block of the pavement tilted up to one side and forming a hollow—a concealing hollow. Travis hesitated, gazing down into that hollow.
Last night a wind had swept across this field; he had felt it up at the port of the ship. Today the air was dead, not a breeze troubled the lightest drift of sand. And that hollow was free of sand. He did not know why his instincts told him that this was wrong. But because he was nudged by that subconscious uneasiness, he went down on his knees to study the interior of the pocket with the close scrutiny of a hunter-tracker.
So he saw what he might otherwise have missed—a depression marked in the soil where the sand had not drifted. On impulse he rubbed his fingertips hard across that faint mark. There was a greasy feel. He unfastened his helmet long enough to raise those same investigating fingers to his nostrils.
A rank odor—sweat of something alive—something with filthy body habits. He was sure of it! And because that thing must have crouched here for a long time in its well-chosen hiding place to watch the ship undetected, he could also believe it possessed intelligence—of a kind. Snapping down his helmet once more, he reported his find over the com.
“You say it must have been there for some time?” Ashe’s voice floated back.
“Yes. And it can’t have been gone long either.” He was basing all his deductions upon that lingering taint which had been imparted by a warm body to the dusty earth within the small shelter.
“No tracks?”
“They wouldn’t show in this stuff.” Travis scuffed his foot across a small fan of sand. No, no tracks. But there could only be one place from which the hidden watcher had come—those buildings half concealed by the creeping dunes. He stood up, walked forward, his hand swinging very close to the weapon at his belt. The sense of danger was very strong.
Ashe stood before the midpoint of the buildings—there was really only one as they could see now. Each of its two outlying wings was connected by a low-lying, windowless passage to the main block. Travis was familiar with the effects of wind and blown-sand erosion upon rock outcrops. Here the same factors had operated to pit surfaces, round and polish away corners and edges, until the walls were like the dunes rising about them.
There were no windows—no visible doorways. But at the end of the wing before Travis there was a dip in the sand dune, breaking the natural line chiseled by the wind. It was a break unusual enough to catch his alerted attention.