“So the female who provided the transfer information, after the male had failed, could in fact have been the real Sol envoy. She tried to kill the impostor, who in turn sought to discredit her.”
“This is possible,” the Master agreed.
“Yet this Solarian is true to his type,” the Polarian argued.
“Unless the Andromedan is also of that type. Do you suppose Sol is the only thrust-culture in the universe? It would be natural for the Andromedan to transfer to the most similar species.”
“Pull-hook,” the Nathian agreed.
“Objection,” the Spican quivered. “We have observed a circumstance, and postulated an explanation, but have omitted the third aspect. There may be no murderer among us; our comrade of Sphere Mirzam may have been dispatched by the Titan.”
“The Titan!” Flint exclaimed. “Surely there is no living Ancient here!” but he looked about nervously.
“We do not know what their powers were, except that they were greater than ours.” the Spican pointed out. “We believe they were land-borne creatures, yet even on our Spican planets, beneath deep and long-enduring oceans, we have found their stigmata. Indeed, these formidable evidences of past life and civilization provided the incentive that took us into space to search for new waters. The Ancients could have left an inanimate guardian, a machine—”
“A robot!” Flint said. “Or boobytraps, the way the pyramidal Egyptians did on our home planet, to stop intrusions.”
“We remain at an impasse,” the Antarean signaled. “I suggest we give up this futile search for a guilty entity within our number and form into pairs, each entity in charge of its partner. Anyone who fails to act in a manner conducive to the welfare of our own galaxy will be suspect—and we shall all gather here before any of us leave. Perhaps the Ancients will provide the solution for us.”
“Good thinking!” Flint agreed. “The Andromedans obviously think there is something here, and they’re afraid of it. When we discover it, they will have to act—or let us gain the secret.”
“Which connections?” the Nathian asked. “Which entities pair?”
“Random is best,” H:::4 said. “Let each entity pair with the one most nearly opposite it, here in this circle.”
As it happened, Nath was opposite Mintaka, Flint opposite Spica, and Polaris opposite Antares. Canopus, suspended above the corpse in his craft, was isolated. “With your agreement,” H:::4 said, “I will pair with the defunct Mirzam. Were I the one who killed it, I could do no further damage, and I will not be able to interfere with your search. If the spy makes its move elsewhere, the partner can summon me for help. I will hover here and remain in radio touch.”
There was no demurral. Despite the murder, all parties were weary of the fruitless quest for the criminal. The three pairs set out in three directions, at last on the trail of the secret of the Ancients.
“I really don’t know what we’re looking for,” Flint admitted. “This may be a wild goose chase.”
“There is no native life here,” the Spican in Antarean guise reminded him, the bumps on its back rippling as it oozed into its forward extrusion. It was able to make fair progress. Flint had to walk slowly, but this was not burdensome. “Thus there can be no flying fish, not even untame ones.”
“Figure of speech,” Flint said, smiling. “I mean there may be nothing we can use.”
“Yet we must search.”
“Yes.” The others were already out of sight, except for the high Canopian craft.
Now the ruins of the site seemed to loom larger, almost threateningly, as though haunted. Flint dismissed it as nervousness resulting from the shock of discovering the murder. His companion might be an alien agent—no, that was unlikely, for the two Antareans had come together. And how would such a creature have punctured the suit of a jumping entity? There seemed to be no weapon. In fact, his spear was the most likely prospect.
His spear. Had the killer tried to frame him? That had failed—or had it? The Mintakan obviously suspected him…
They came to a tall structure, an almost-intact dome rising out of the sand. There was just one hole in it, where air had evidently blasted out at the time of decompression. Yet if the loss of pressure had been that fast, killing every creature there instantly, why weren’t there any bodies? No, no mystery there; an expedition would have come to pick them up. Recovery of the dead was common to sapience; it tied in with belief in the afterlife, laying ghosts to rest. Flint did not sneer, even privately; he believed in ghosts.
“This requires exploration,” the Spican said. “Yet in my present body, I hesitate to traverse such territory.”
“Which sex are you?” Flint inquired.
“Impact. It was thought this would be better for land traverse than Undulant or Sibilant, and perhaps this is so, but the mode is hardly comfortable. I must admit too that it is strange indeed to come close to so many types without mergence. I remain somewhat nervous.”
“I can understand that. I was an Impact too, and know the correspondence of limbs is only very general. And of course you are not using limbs at all now.” Flint was now reassured that his companion was legitimate—though the Mintakan’s point about the Andromedan’s knowledge of the Spican system was valid. He would have to trust his intuition—and keep alert. “Since I am in my own body, and it is an athletic one, I shall climb inside, and relay news to you.”
“This is kind,” the creature agreed.
Flint stepped gingerly over the jagged sill. His fragile-seeming suit was tough, but he didn’t want it scraping against the diamond-hard fragments. He came to stand inside the dome.
It was bare but beautiful. The complete night sky was visible through its material. No… Flint’s excellent visual recall told him that it was not the sky. It was an image, painted or imprinted holographically inside the dome so cleverly that it looked authentic. As he moved, it moved, as though he were traveling at some multiple of light speed, the near stars shifting relative to the far ones. The effect was awe-inspiring, technologically and esthetically—and intellectually, for it showed a configuration similar in general but completely different in detail from anything he had viewed before. Flint knew the stars as only a Stone Age man could know them; there were no correspondences here. Was it even any part of this galaxy? He would have to check it out when he got back to Sol, if need be querying Sphere Knyfh and any other major Spheres that were now in reach. This could be extremely important.
“The home sky of the Ancients,” he breathed. “From this, we can determine their Sphere of origin…”
He could have stared at the splendor of that strange sky interminably, but tore his eyes away. He looked around the floor of the chamber. It was bare—no machines, no furniture, no bodies. So he still had no clue to the physical aspect of the Ancients. But of course this was only one structure of hundreds. Possibly they had come here to gawk at the vision of the far-distant ancestral home, recharging their spiritual vitality. They must have had eyes, at least. It suggested something fundamentally good about the Ancients; they were, in their fashion, human. They had colonized much of the galaxy, yet they longed for home, and kept its memory fresh. Probably this had been a desolate outpost, a supply station, with forced tours of duty: a necessary function of empire.
Yet it had been wiped out, and suddenly. Perhaps some terrible beam from space had voided their pressure shield, releasing their bubble of atmosphere, killing them all. Maybe an enemy had landed, sacked the post, and removed all artifacts of potential value. In which case there would be nothing left for the archaeologists. Too bad.