“I’d like to know what happened here.” Mac puffed up to join the Terran, towing the gray lead horse of the pack train. “Looks like somebody got real mad and loosed a buster where it would do the most harm—don’t it now?”
Storm gazed at the ruins about them for the first time with interest in the debris itself, not just regarding it as an entanglement through which they must worm their way. He still did not care to make too close an inspection, but Mac’s suggestion was shrewdly taken. An earthquake might have reduced a stoutly built structure to this, but mere lapse of time—no. And outside of a convulsion of nature there remained only war. Yet nowhere in the tradition of the Norbies was there any reference to war as the reason for the withdrawal of the sealed ones.
“Yes—a buster—” Mac scrambled ahead. “Or maybe a good, big flood.”
“Or a series of floods—” That was Sorenson catching up as they paused to rest the horses. “Look there!” Now that he pointed out the high watermarks on the wall of the valley the others could not miss them.
“Do you suppose that tunnel acts as a drain?” hazarded Storm.
“If it wasn’t originally intended for that use, it must serve now—and has done so for a good many years. There’s a large lake in the valley according to Bokatan—a few flash floods and the overflow must seek an outlet—”
The ruins sprawled for half a mile of hard going. Then they came into the course of a dry river bed fronting a sharp upward slope. The black rail ran straight ahead, to be hidden in the earth of the slope that perhaps had accumulated since the builders of the black wedge had laid it down.
Up the slope they trudged and stood on the verge of a broad dam, which controlled the stagnant-looking, brown water of quite a sizable lake. And beyond the opposite shore of that dank lake was the rest of the valley.
Dotted in the lake itself and along its shores were mounds of weathered and overgrown debris. The remains of a city? Sorenson sighed and pulled off his hat, wiping his arm across his flushed dusty face.
“We may not have found the Caves,” he said slowly, “but we have found something. Go ahead and make camp, boys, I want all the shots of this I can get before the light is gone!”
They made camp on an inlet of the lake and Storm took over the job of dampening down the ground with insect repellent. He noticed that the Norbies did not range far away and that the natives piled their hide night shelters well within the circle of the fire glow.
Mac surveyed the wealth of mounds. “If we’re going to dig, we have plenty of places to choose from. Only maybe you ’n’ me ’n’ Sorenson’s goin’ to have to do most of it. Norbies don’t ever take kindly to usin’ shovels—”
“About all we can do on this trip is map.” Sorenson came down at last to join them. “Maybe open a test trench or two. A couple of small finds to impress the directors would help out a lot. But if this site is as good as it looks, we’d need a more permanent camp and a dozen years to really clean it out. Bokatan”—he appealed to their guide—“this water,” he signed, “does it go with the coming of the big dry, or does it stay?”
The Norbie’s hands spread in a gesture of bafflement. “Bokatan come only in wet times—no see in dry. But water much—no think go away when big dry comes—”
“I’m inclined to believe that,” Sorenson said happily. “That means we can think about year around work here.”
“If you don’t get too much water,” Storm returned. “From the evidence of those high watermarks there have been floods clear across this space.”
The Survey man refused to be dismayed by that. “If necessary we can pitch camp back against the cliffs to the north. There is an upward slope toward that end of the valley. Surely the whole place is never altogether under water. We’ve had high rains for the past month and see the size of the lake?”
He was given a chance to test his deductions before dawn the next morning, for the same kind of drenching rain that had bogged the trail herd came to flood the camp. In a hurry, they moved away from the rapidly rising lake. To take refuge on top of one of the mounds of debris was a temptation, but such a move could only prove more dangerous in the end.
While the steady downpour cut the danger of attack from a Nitra war party, the rain bothered the Norbies. Water and war were both gifts of the Thunder Drummers, but this was not good land in which to be caught by water, and, when they witnessed one landslip along the cliff wall, they pressed back to the upper and unknown northern end of the valley.
Three of the Norbies rode in search of higher ground that might lie above the old flood-level marks, and Storm and Mac, working together, pushed the pack horses steadily away from the lake, following the upward slope. Sorenson and Bokatan struck off in the direction of the reputed Caves, for the Survey man was determined to learn all he could if there was danger of their having to pull out entirely.
Usually tractable enough, the pack horses were hard to handle that morning. Storm wished he could have coaxed Surra to serve as an additional drover, but the big cat had disappeared on her own early in the rain and the Terran knew she was going to hole up somewhere out of the wet. Since he had given her no definite orders she would follow her own instincts. He had not sighted Baku since dawn.
Nearly all the horses had scrambled up a steeper rise when the Terran heard Mac shout excitedly. Hoping that the pack master had discovered a good stretch of higher territory, Storm whacked at the last horse in line, his own mare.
Then the world came apart about him. Storm had been under fire on the training range, he had witnessed—from a distance—the obliteration bombing of an enemy stronghold. But this was no man-made fury—it was the raw sword of nature herself striking unleashed.
The rain, now heavier than before, became a smothering blanket under a black sky. He could not even see Rain’s ears, head, plastered mane. The gush of water took away his breath, beat about his body.
Lightning—purple fire in jagged spears—thunder claps that left one deafened, battered—Storm’s horse reared, fought for freedom, wild with fear. Then the stallion ran through a wall of water and his rider could only cling blindly to his seat, lying along the horse’s neck gasping.
They were still in the dark but the rain no longer beat on them, only the fury of its rushing filled the world with sound. Lightning again tore at the sky. And above him, in that flash, Storm saw an overhang of earth break loose and fall. Half dazed, he jumped, stumbled to his knees, and went down, as mud cascaded on him, pressing him flat under its weight until he lost consciousness.
It was dark when the Terran opened his eyes and tried feebly to move—dark with an absence of all light that was as frightening as the silence that now walled him in. But, half-conscious as he was, Storm struggled for freedom. There was a break in the cover over him, and he levered up the forepart of his body.
None of his bones appeared to be broken. He hurt all over, but he could move arms and legs, wriggled the rest of him out of the mass of soil that had imprisoned him. Storm tried to remember just what had happened in those last moments before the world caved in.
He called—to be answered by a plaintive whinny, shrill and frightened. Storm called again through the darkness in soft-voiced reassurance, using the speech of the horse tamer, which he had used with Rain since the first moment he had laid hands on the stallion. And, as he spoke, he dug at the earth still encasing his legs, until he could stand up.
The Terran explored about him with outstretched arms—until he remembered the torch at his belt. Snapping its button, Storm aimed the beam straight up. The answering light was faint, oddly paled. He stood by a rock wall—and, as the beam swept down and away from that solid surface, it was swallowed up in a pocket of darkness that might mark the interior of a cave of some expanse. But caught in the torch’s beam was Rain, white foam roping his jaws, his eyes rolling wildly.